Lincoln at Gettysburg

The Words that Remade America

By: Garry Wills

Narrated by: Garry Wills

Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 1993

There is perhaps no more compelling example of the power of words than Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In merely 272 words, Lincoln gave the nation "a new birth of freedom" by tracing its history to the Declaration of Independence, as well as incorporating elements of the Greek revival and Transcendentalism. Lincoln's entire life and deep political experience went into the creation of his revolutionary masterpiece. By examining both the Address and Lincoln in their historical and cultural context, noted historian Garry Wills breathes news life into words we thought we knew and reveals much about a President so easily mythologized but often misunderstood.©1992 by Literary Research Incorporated (P)1992 Dove Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A grand book Lincoln would have loved to read." (James David Barber, author of The Presidential Character)
"...stimulating, original, and altogether absorbing work." (David Herbert Donald, Harvard University)

Academic

I learned much more from this book than I expected to. It’s almost like a PhD dissertation, which I appreciate.

For academics...

I was excited to gain some insight to this most famous of speeches. However, I struggled to pay attention and even sped up the delivery speed to finally finish listening. This is a book that only an academic would enjoy. And then probably only linguists. I am a political scientist and historian and was not all that interested in the content. My take-away is that Lincoln gave a great speech that was novel in its format and that he was very careful in crafting it. About 50 pages would have been enough to teach me that....

Great History!!!

Wonderful insight into the Real Gettysburg Experience.......... Terrific detail. It becomes real!!!!!

Dry, but informative

This is why most authors should not narrate their own work. The book itself had some compelling sections but was largely very dry.

A Review in 292

Fundamentally, the thing I love about criticism is the ability to read a damn fine book about a damn speech and recognize the author of the book wrote a little more than a page for every word (292) in the Gettysburg Address. If you count appendixes and notes (why wouldn't you when the appendix and notes matter?).

I once teased my wife, during my early wooing stage, that I wanted to write an ode to every hair on her head (a load of odes). Garry Wills did. This book is both academic criticism (one chapter is infused with new historicism, one is textual criticism, one is formalist, one is mythological) and an ode to Lincoln, Language, and this damn fine speech. I could see Garry Wills publishing each chapter in some well-funded Civil War journal and eventually weaving each paper together. I'm not sure how it really happened. Wills might just have used the chapters and forms of literary criticism as an organizational framework. I am not going to do an exegesis on the book to find out. That would be far too meta.

Anyway, it was a quick and fascinating read and significantly deepened my understanding of Lincoln's motives for the speech while also acting as an Entmythologisierung* of the text. No. Lincoln did not write the text on the back of a napkin while on a train TO Gettysburg. Anyway, a must read for those who love history, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, or Transcendentalism.

* I'm using the German here as a joke, since there were several instances when Wills referenced Everett bringing back the seeds of Transcendentalism and higher criticism from their studies there. I'm also using it because it is 1.5x as fun as just saying demystification.

One of my favorite listens

I come back to this again and again. dense yet completely accessible. the authors narration is a great addition. format makes out easy to pick up and put back down. nice companion to Team of Rivals.

Poor Reader

The book is pretty good. But the reader pro-noun-ces ev-ery syl-lable as a sep-er-ate word. After a few hours it drives you crazy. I had to give up on listening to it.

Good listen, poorly recorded

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Well composed analysis of how and why the Gettysburg Address was written as it was. Places the ideas, grammar and intent at the time of its creation. Definitely of interest for anyone wanting to explore the address in terms of the currents of the time. Less convincing is Wills' proposition that the address forever altered political oratory. If brevity an concision are the thrust here, 'vene, vidi, vici'. While the book is excellent, and the reading good, the recording is not. This is one of the fuzziest files I've ever downloaded from Audible.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Not really a story about characters

What three words best describe Garry Wills’s voice?

A historian, dispassionately presenting his thesis.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Ken Burns already covered it.

illuminating Analysis

Surpringly detailed unpacking of the most famous speech in American history, it's inspirational foundations and the between the lines intent of the speakers vision of a country's rebirth.