Summoned to Glory: The Audacious Life of Abraham Lincoln

by Richard Striner

Overview

A radical reinterpretation of America’s greatest president.

Where previous Lincoln biographers describe his temperament as “moderate,” “passive,” or even “conservative,”historian Richard Striner offers a stunningly original perspectivethat will shed significant new light on one of the most studied figures in American history. Striner shows Lincoln’s audacity as no other book has ever done. By emphasizing the workings of Lincoln’s mind—stressing his cunning, his overall honesty, strategic thinking—even his ability to change his mind—Striner looks anew at many topics and themes important to Lincoln’s story that either revise or add new meaning to the work of previous biographers. His insights into Lincoln’s life, but also into antebellum America, and the military and political history of the Civil War, make this book indispensable for well-read armchair historians, seasoned students of Lincoln, the Civil War, or the American presidency and newcomers alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538137178
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	544
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Historian Richard Striner is the author of Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery (Oxford), Lincoln’s Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power (R&L) and many other works on American history. He resides in Pasadena, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Preface

PART ONE: PREPARATIONS
Chapter One: Rough Beginnings
Chapter Two: Initiations
Chapter Three: Rites of Passage

PART TWO: CRISIS OF AMBITION
Chapter Four: Improvising
Chapter Five: Into the Maelstrom
Chapter Six: Quest for Purpose

PART THREE: RISE TO DESTINY
Chapter Seven: Containing Slavery
Chapter Eight: Thwarting Douglas
Chapter Nine: Disunion

PART FOUR: AT THE HELM
Chapter Ten: Crisis
Chapter Eleven: Chain of Steel
Chapter Twelve: Transformation
Chapter Thirteen: Race against Time

PART FIVE: TRIUMPH
Chapter Fourteen: Death Struggle
Chapter Fifteen: Stolen Future

Epilogue
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

04/20/2020

Washington College historian Striner (Woodrow Wilson and World War I) venerates Abraham Lincoln’s “capacity for manipulation, his power to command while projecting sweet innocence” in this run-of-the-mill biography. Setting out to challenge the “wrong-headed” stereotype of Lincoln as a “slow-moving moderate who somehow achieved true greatness,” Striner highlights his antislavery stances as a one-term congressman in the late 1840s, including his support for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited slavery in territories acquired in the Mexican-American War, and his failed attempt to introduce a bill abolishing slavery in Washington, D.C. Striner also credits Lincoln with launching a “direct attack upon the racism of Douglas” in his famous 1854 “Peoria Speech” criticizing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Though Striner succeeds in casting Lincoln as a leader who combined lofty moral values with superb political cunning, his take will be familiar even to general readers, and his awkward blend of long, undigested excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches and letters with staccato one-line paragraphs grates, as does his disparagement of the women in Lincoln’s life, including wife Mary Todd Lincoln, who “fancied herself a kind of power behind the throne,” according to Striner, and “used emotional blackmail to get her way.” This adulatory portrait contributes little to the understanding of Lincoln. (June)

Publishers Weekly

At the core of Summoned to Glory are Lincoln’s attitudes toward race and slavery. Continuing where he left off in his Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery, Striner maintains that not until Lincoln was in his forties did his attitudes on slavery and race crystalize.... Lincoln, Striner believes, was a ‘holistic’ thinker possessing great strategic abilities hidden behind humor and self-deprecation…. It was Lincoln’s intent, according to Striner, that from the beginning he would ‘put slavery on a path to ultimate extinction.’ This interpretation concurs with, among others, James Oakes’s in his recent The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution.

Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association

Among the many thousands of books on Lincoln, this one by Richard Striner is sure to stand out as one of the best biographies in decades. Striner shows how Lincoln boldly and ‘audaciously’ used his power to protect the Union and advance the cause of emancipation. This dramatic and fast-paced narrative will be sure to engage and provoke readers for years to come. I highly recommend it.

Timothy S. Huebner

Richard Striner has mastered a huge amount of evidence and scholarship about Lincoln and with literary skill has presented it in a superbly readable biography that will appeal to expert and novice alike. Of special value is the author's analysis of how Lincoln reached decisions and orchestrated the power to carry them out amid the chaos of a war that under his leadership preserved the United States and ended slavery.

James M. McPherson James M. McPherson

Richard Striner has given us a keen, fresh look at Lincoln’s challenging youth, his unlikely rise to the presidency, and his providential leadership in America’s darkest hour. Summoned to Glory is an original, engaging, insightful view of the great man as a cagey politician and an audacious military and political strategist, enhanced by an enjoyable style and a depth of context often missing from Lincoln biographies.

James B. Conroy

Written for general readers who want a broad and deep understanding of Lincoln’s greatness, this volume also offers much for scholars to ponder and debate.. . Fascinating anecdotes and insights into [Lincoln’s] depressions round out this towering biography.

Choice Reviews

An audacious biography that forthrightly reveals the depth and sincerity of Lincoln’s antislavery convictions as well as the grand moral strategy that guided his statesmanship. This lucid work richly captures the multifaceted genius of a complex man who was at once ambitious yet empathetic; great yet humble; honest yet shrewd; and righteous without being self-righteous. Striner’s concise single volume is compulsively readable, dispelling dark distortions and shedding clear light on the sixteenth president’s life and times.

Joseph R. Fornieri

Richard Striner has mastered a huge amount of evidence and scholarship about Lincoln and with literary skill has presented it in a superbly readable biography that will appeal to expert and novice alike.  Of special value is the author's analysis of how Lincoln reached decisions and orchestrated the power to carry them out amid the chaos of a war that under his leadership preserved the United States and ended slavery.

James M. McPherson

Written for general readers who want a broad and deep understanding of Lincoln’s greatness, this volume also offers much for scholars to ponder and debate. . . Fascinating anecdotes and insights into [Lincoln’s] depressions round out this towering biography.

CHOICE