Publishers Weekly
04/03/2023
In this intriguing yet inconclusive account, historian Zeitz (Lincoln’s Boys) reevaluates Abraham Lincoln’s religious convictions. Tracing Lincoln’s development from a young man “eager to escape his parents’ stern religiosity,” through his period as someone “who openly questioned the divinity of Christ,” to his maturation into a seasoned lawyer and politician who knew how “to bite his tongue,” Zeitz contends that Lincoln’s increasing invocation of Christian language and imagery during the Civil War was not borne out of spiritual conviction so much as necessity: “the Bible was simply a useful reference point for his audience.” Nevertheless, Lincoln’s rhetoric pointed toward an unprecedented “alignment of church, state, and party” that happened during the conflict. While acknowledging that Lincoln’s “brand of Christian faith was not evangelical by common definition,” Zeitz claims that Lincoln’s mobilization of the engines of evangelicalism on behalf of the Union arguably made him “the nation’s first evangelical president.” Though Lincoln fades far into the background at times and Zeitz’s suggestion that the “muscular Christianity” of the Civil War helped pave the way for the emergence of the religious right in the 1970s isn’t entirely convincing, he provides valuable context on the intermingling of faith and politics in American history. The result is a fresh and thorough take on an overlooked aspect of Lincoln’s presidency. (May)
From the Publisher
Zeitz adds meaningful context to the story, examining the ways in which soldiers experienced religion in the field . . . Importantly, Zeitz includes the perspective of Black Americans, who held views of their own that were often at odds with the tendency to see the United States as a promised land, or Canaan . . . Zeitz has chosen an important element of Lincoln’s life to explore, especially in an age when the virus of religious certainty drives so much autocratic thinking, at home and abroad.”—The New York Times Book Review
"In his thoughtful new book...Zeitz writes a compelling chronicle of Lincoln's evolving relationship to faith against a backdrop of events that influenced the Great Emancipator as much as he influenced them. Such a portrait of young Lincoln in particular, who "studiously avoided mixing religion and politics," is timely and provocative."—The National Catholic Reporter
“Zeitz’s timely, thoroughly documented account compellingly portrays how the war crumbled Jefferson’s wall separating church and state and presaged lingering changes in American discourse.”
—Booklist
“A broad overview of the rapidly changing faith journey of Lincoln individually and of the antebellum U.S. as a whole [and] a worthwhile addition to the corpus of Lincoln studies.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Building the Great Society
"Building the Great Society is endlessly absorbing, and astoundingly well-researched — all good historians do their homework, but Zeitz goes above and beyond. It's a more than worthwhile addition to the canon of books about Johnson.”
—NPR, Michael Schaub
“[A] well-researched and readable history of a vast governmental effort to make America anew.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Zeitz draws creatively on memoirs and White House documents. His tales… zip along with style.”
—The New Republic
“Zeitz’s lively narrative foregrounds the personalities and power plays of Johnson’s White House staff…[his] lucid account yields engrossing insights into one of America’s most hopeful, productive, and tragic political eras.”
—Publishers Weekly
"Zeitz presents accessible, nuanced portraits of the men behind Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic programs...[and] effectively demonstrates how Johnson assembled one of history’s most productive White House staffs: an amalgam of committed John F. Kennedy holdovers along with new talents from academia, the newspaper world, and think tanks."
—Library Journal
“Joshua Zeitz’s beautifully written book is not only a riveting portrait of LBJ and the talented men around him, but also a compelling reminder of what extraordinary political skill it took to enact the body of laws that made America a more humane and admirable society. Every officeholder in Washington would profit from reading this book.”
—Robert Dallek, author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 and Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life
“Zeitz argues convincingly that Johnson's team . . . quickly became a smoothly running and effective machine, accomplishing a great amount in a relatively short time . . . A timely reconsideration of the Johnson years.”
—Booklist
Praise for Joshua Zeitz and Lincoln's Boys
“A century before Harry Hopkins, Clark Clifford, or Ted Sorensen, John Hay and John Nicolay performed the duties of presidential aide, adviser, political operative, and confidant. Even the great Abraham Lincoln needed support, and Joshua Zeitz captures perfectly the intimate, interior world of the White House.”
—David Plouffe, former White House Senior Adviser
‟What a wonderful, welcome book. Zeitz has pulled off a difficult task—revealing how the myth of Lincoln came to be without distorting the true greatness of our extraordinary sixteenth president.ˮ
—Ken Burns (filmmaker)
“Joshua Zeitz’s delightful study of John Hay and John Nicolay interweaves intimate biography, political drama, and the shaping of historical memory to produce an arresting and original narrative. Above all, it reminds us that, thanks to Lincoln’s secretaries, the moral dimensions of the emancipationist Civil War could not be bleached from the historical record by an increasingly fashionable understanding of the struggle as a romantic ‘brothers’ conflict.’”
—Richard Carwardine, author of Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
“Abraham Lincoln was blessed with truly first-rate biographers in John Nicolay and John Hay, so it is ‘altogether fitting and proper’ that Nicolay and Hay have now attracted a terrific chronicler of their own life and times in Joshua Zeitz. This fine book traces the extraordinary evolution of Lincoln’s two private secretaries from clerks into tireless historians and rabid keepers of the flame. Historians have long remembered their roles as canny observers of the White House during the Civil War, but this study adds much fascinating new material about their peerless role in crafting and preserving the Lincoln image.”
—Harold Holzer, author of The Civil War in 50 Objects
“Beautifully researched and written, it restores to full stature two figures who might have been young, but left a deep mark upon history. Highly recommended.”
—Ted Widmer, former presidential speechwriter and author of Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City
Kirkus Reviews
2023-02-25
A portrait of Lincoln’s faith life, with a changing America as the backdrop.
Zeitz, a contributing writer at Politico and author of Lincoln’s Boys, provides a broad overview of the rapidly changing faith journey of Lincoln individually and of the antebellum U.S. as a whole. The author explains that Lincoln was raised in a strictly Calvinist home, the son of hard-shell Baptists, who “distrusted seminary-trained theologians and believed that God could speak through ordinary laypeople at least as well as college-educated elites. They had little use for ecclesiastical authority.” It was a theology quite opposed to the evangelical and reforming church movements sweeping across America at the top. Lincoln rejected much of his parents’ theological beliefs, and he forged his own path while never quite shaking the concept of God as a distant judge. Zeitz spends most of the text describing how evangelical Christianity was transformed in a matter of decades into the dominant faith expression in America. “What started in the backwoods as a challenge to organized Christianity,” he notes, “became, in effect, the new Christian establishment. Evangelical Christianity wove itself inextricably into…civic and private life.” Lincoln, meanwhile, remained largely immune to this spiritual tide. He was, at best, a deist who respected yet dismissed traditional Christian beliefs. The Civil War—and, within that larger story, the personal suffering caused by the death of his son, Willie—changed everything, however, and in his final years, Lincoln became, if not a conventional Christian, definitely a man of deep and searching faith. Lincoln saw himself as an instrument of God, charged with waging a war meant to punish the entirety of the nation for the sin of slavery. Whose side God was on, if either, was known to God alone. Throughout, Zeitz is a competent guide to this specific piece of American religious history.
A worthwhile addition to the corpus of Lincoln studies.
