This is the first book I've read by Gore Vidal, and now I want to read more. He really brought this period to life and made it interesting and understandable. It was nothing like what I would have thought, had I thought more about it. The White House was a rat-infested dump with smelly swamps and garbage all around, where people were often sick or died, and inhabited by mostly confederate sympathizers. It was not the best place to be a Yankee.Lincoln was always interesting. He and his family did...

This is another entry in the Superb category of true historical fiction. I cannot heap enough praise on Vidal for his ability to present history in a readable format. He understood the characters, mated them with the facts and made them flesh and bone. Still, this is fiction and he says he did take some liberties.All of the principal characters really existed, and they said and did pretty much what I have them saying and doing, with the exception of the Surratts and David Herold (who really live...

Once again, I am amazed by the breadth and depth of Vidal's knowledge. His seemingly encyclopedic grasp of the era is matched in equal parts by caustic wit and empathy. Vidal's Lincoln is at once human and monolithic, and the pages are imbued with his curious melancholy. (On a side note, one gets the feeling that Mark Ryden had read this book...)The supporting characters are equally interesting. Mary Todd is nuanced and Vidal brilliantly tracks the evolution of Lincoln's relationship with his ci...

I really like how Vidal writes. I read half of this novel before I watched the Lincoln movie (not the vampire hunter one :D) and I was really impressed by the amount of research that went into this book. As someone who knows very little American history, I definitely gained a lot more knowledge after reading this book.It was a long read but worth it.

This is not the easiest book to read. It is dense, large, and dense. But very much worth the read if you have any interest in the American Civil War or President Lincoln. Like any good Historical novel worth it's salt, it's brilliantly researched. A lot of the things said by Lincoln in the novel were in fact recorded speech from the great President. What I love about this novel though is that you never quite know what is going through Lincoln's head. All the point of views are from his wife, his...

What a superb entertainment this book is. Out of all the books about President Lincoln, this is my favorite. The writing is top notch because, well, Gore Vidal, that's why. Vidal literally breathes life into Lincoln and the rest of office with wit, charm and dignity. I highly recommend this book to anyone, even if they're not history buffs but just want to be captivated by a good book. 5 out 5. Absolutely stunning.

I have memories of when this book came out. As I recall, it was an event, something heralded in bookstores and written about in places beyond the book review sections. Here was a major American intellectual taking on one of our greatest American sacred cows.This is still an intriguing book, and one I mostly enjoyed, but I’m struck as well by how far in the past its release date now seems. For lack of a better term, Gore Vidal was writing for a “middlebrow” readership, people who were neither aca...

Gore Vidal was a huge discovery for me. Until I'd read this book, I knew only that he was related to Jackie Kennedy Onassis and and Lee Radziwill and that he was a guest on many talk shows of the 70s & 80s where other well-known guests frequently found his opinions profoundly upsetting. But there was a lot of that going on at the time. I have always admired Abraham Lincoln as our most important president (except for brief periods when I was enamored of Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman and John Ada...

In Lincoln, Gore Vidal tones down his usual insouciance for a fine-grained, occasionally profound portrait of power. Spanning the American Civil War, the novel's told from various perspectives: Lincoln's ambitious cabinet secretaries, William Seward and Salmon Chase (and Chase's daughter Kate Chase Sprague, a force in her own right); his personal secretary, John Hay (whose flirtations with Kate Chase come to naught, and whose visits to a bawdy house provide the story's only vulgar notes); his lo...

First, I just read through many reviews here on Goodreads where the comment was made (over and over again), what an amazing work of non-fiction this is. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but this book is entitled "Lincoln: A Novel" and advises the bookseller to shelve it as Fiction/Literature. This is a novel, y'all, and it's important to know the difference. The author himself, in an afterword, makes it known that, while he stayed true to historical pieces of information as much as possibl...

Wildly entertaining, Gore really brings to life Washington DC in 1860, when our nation truly was on the threshold of (near certain) dissolution. Lincoln, the surprise victor of the presidential race faced a mostly confederate-leaning city (the capitol dome was being constructed) and everyone expected the raw-boned Midwesterner to fail. But he was wily and had an animal's instinct with people, keeping his veneer carefully sculpted and his ultimate strategies hidden. The period covered is 1860-186...

Some have deplored Lincoln's indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.Gore Vidal

A Novel Of Abraham LincolnIn his 1984 historical novel "Lincoln", Gore Vidal has written with great insight about our sixteenth president, his cabinet, his family, his enemies, and the Civil War Era. Lengthy though the book is, the writing is crisp and eloquent. It held my attention throughout. The book is part of a series of novels by Vidal exploring the history of the United States.In writing historical novels, it is difficult to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. This is particularly th...

Whatever hubris it takes to write a biography of Abraham Lincoln, it surely takes plenty to write a research-intensive 657-page novel that covers the entire presidency. Vidal accomplishes this compression by including a pile of exposition in dialogue without it ever quite seeming like he's doing so; perhaps famous national leaders are the only characters in fiction exempt from the rule. Portraits of "minor" characters -- John Hay (one of Lincoln's personal secretaries) and Kate Chase (daughter o...

Gore Vidal's enjoyable and masterly fictional biography of Abraham Lincoln is, according to the author, largely based on fact.Until I read Lincoln I had a naive belief that he was a modern saint. That he was not. He is portrayed as being a brilliant politician: persistent, both ruthless as well as humane, and pragmatic.We are introduced to him as the USA was in the process of becoming disunited and was plunging into a deadly civil war. Not only was his country disunited, but also was his Republi...

Arguably the best historical fiction book every written beating out even notables like Shaara's Killer Angels. Hell this is probably one of the top 5 books on the Civil War period. (Along with Shelby Foote's epic three volume opus, McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and the aforementioned Killer Angels)If you have the slightest interest in history, the Civil War, Lincoln or even just a beautifully constructed story of politics in a time of war read it. Meticulously researched and exquisitely put...

I read Gore Vidal's biography of President Lincoln several years ago, after watching and In Depth interview on C-Span Books TV. He placed a high value on writing historical fiction as a way to read and learn about history. The primary value of historical fiction (besides the pleasure of reading), where the writer has done considerable research to get the details mostly right, is being its ability to make historical events comprehensible, by providing the reader with context for how events would

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.In the immortal words of Joe Biden this was a “big f**king deal”. If y...

As I write my review I am within the last hundred pages and last few months of Abraham Lincoln's life. In other words, Good Friday 1865 is on the horizon and both President and Mrs. Lincoln are set to go and see "Our American Cousin" at that now-fated Washingtonian landmark Ford's Theater. I have been immersing myself in all things Lincoln/Civil War in the last few months as a result of the new Spielberg film and my already having seen it twice. For as much as I cannot stop raving about the film...

This was rollicking good read, and may even contain some historical truths about Abraham Lincoln and his fellow politicos duing the turbulent era of the Civil War. Vidal draws a vivid picture of 19th century Washington - a city built on a swamp, with rudimentary facilities, but with grand aspirations. Lincoln is presented as a man of brilliant lawyerly talents, a pragmatic strategist rather than an idealistic opponent of slavery. Throughout the book, Vidal makes clear that Lincoln (alternately r...