What Lincoln Believed

Zusatztext “It will almost certainly change the way you think about America and one of its greatest presidents. . . . Lind makes an already somewhat mysterious president still more puzzling and interesting.”— The New York Times Book Review “Well-researched and reasoned. . . . Adds valuable perspective to the vast arena of Lincoln scholarship. Lind’s aim is to give us a Lincoln in the context of his own times! as a man who lived within history and not above it.”— The Christian Science Monitor “A thought-provoking contribution to the Lincoln literature that deserves to be taken seriously and will surely prompt debate.”— The Washington Post Book World “[Lind] allows the reader to see beyond the surface for an intimate glimpse of this truly American icon.”— Tucson Citizen Informationen zum Autor Michael Lind is the best-selling author of a number of books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, including The Next American Nation (1995) and Hamilton’s Republic: Readings in American Democratic Nationalism (1997). A former editor or writer for Harper’s Magazine , The New Yorker and the New Republic , Lind is the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. Klappentext Countless books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, yet few historians and biographers have taken Lincoln seriously as a thinker or attempted to place him in the context of major intellectual traditions. In this refreshing, brilliantly argued portrait, Michael Lind examines the ideas and beliefs that guided Lincoln as a statesman and shaped the United States in its time of great crisis.In a century in which revolutions against monarchy and dictatorship in Europe and Latin America had failed, Lincoln believed that liberal democracy must be defended for the good of the world. During an age in which many argued that only whites were capable of republican government, Lincoln insisted on the universality of human rights and the potential for democracy everywhere. Yet he also held many of the prejudices of his time; his opposition to slavery was rooted in his allegiance to the ideals of the American Revolution, not support for racial equality. Challenging popular myths and capturing Lincoln's strengths and flaws, Lind offers fascinating and revelatory insights that deepen our understanding of this great and complicated man.ONE Abraham Lincoln: The Myth and the Man In 1863 the democratic republic as a form of government was rare and in danger of extinction. In Europe, the dominant region of the world, monarchs and aristocrats were securely in command. The nations of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans were divided among the empires of three dynasties: the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Ottomans. Germans who did not live in Habsburg lands were ruled by petty dukes and princes in a handful of large kingdoms, of which the most important, Prussia, was the domain of the Hohenzollern family. Italy was carved into small and weak states subject to Habsburg or French domination. Iberia and Scandinavia, too, had their kings and aristocrats. France was a dictatorship ruled by Louis Napoleon, who like his uncle had posed as a champion of republican government before declaring himself emperor. Britain was the most liberal great power in Europe, but it was far from democratic. The monarchy and the House of Lords were hereditary. The House of Commons was elected by a tiny elite of commoners. The Reform Act of 1832 increased the percentage of the adult population in Britain permitted to vote from 1.8 percent to 2.7 percent. Subsequent reform legislation in 1867 and 1884 increased the electorate to 6.4 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively.(1) British colonists in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were subject to imperial authority, while in India and other parts of the empire nonwhite subjects lacked not only the suffrage bu...

Product details

• Authors: Michael Lind
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 09.05.2006
• EAN: 9781400030736
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-3073-6
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 134 mm x 205 mm x 20 mm
• Subject: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies