Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Ronald C White (1-2); Abraham Lincoln (1-2)

A. Lincoln by Ronald C White

Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C White

Second Inaugrual Address by Abraham Lincoln

Biographical Sketch by Abraham Lincoln

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A. Lincoln – This is a fairly broad, but not overly long biography of Abraham Lincoln. The book comes in at about 800 pages with notes. Some others come in at 720, 1088, 720, 800, and even 2008 pages. So this is “small”? Ronald White calls this book “A. Lincoln” in part because that’s how Lincoln signed his name, and also for the metaphorical gap in our understanding of Lincoln, and the way that people fill in that gap with whatever they seem to want […]

Lincoln’s Game of Thrones

Lincoln by Gore Vidal

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Much has been made of Abraham Lincoln’s political genius. He is often painted as a savant, manipulating both his opponents and allies to align with his will as he navigated the treacherous years of the American Civil War. Gore Vidal brings this to life in a continuation of his Narratives of Empire series. Although not the second book in publication order, it is the second one in sequence, with one loose connection to the first (no spoilers although Vidal clearly wants to thread the story). Burr, […]

Move over Lassie, Honey is in town

Honey, the Dog Who Saved Abe Lincoln by Shari Swanson

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I have been meaning to read Honey, the Dog Who Saved Abe Lincoln for awhile now. I had the reader copy and saw it in various places around the store once it came out a year ago. But it was not until a chance (or more actually blind) grab at a pile of reader copies in the page by the desk that it came out and the rule was, “Read what you grab.” Shari Swanson bases her story of Abe Lincoln as a boy on […]

White whale for a blackout (cbr12bingo 2: white whale)

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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This is a door stopper of a book at 754 pages, but I’ve read longer books quicker. I don’t read enough history, and despite my historian father being obsessed with the civil war in particular, I know the highlights and half-remembered tidbits from AP history.  Team of Rivals has been THE Lincoln book since its publication, so it seemed like a good enough place to start. So I did.  Years ago.  And this whale got beached. I’m glad I finished it, but it is a […]

I take an odd sort of comfort in knowing that things in America have been just as bad, if not worse, than they are right now.

Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro

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The 2016 election: we will eventually be far away from that time, but while we wait to heal we will continue to publish works – everything from tweets to films- about how it shaped our current situation. In 2017, the Delacorte Theater  staged a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Central Park . Shakespeare had been done live in Central Park for years. Julius Caesar had been performed steadily around the world since it debuted in 1599. Caesar has taken on many depictions throughout the […]

“History is booooooring”

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This series by Steve Sheinkin has its moments. They might not be for the adult reader, but the child reader (about ages 7 to 9) will get a kick out of our heroes Abby and Doc time-traveling through history. In history class, Abby and Doc are reading about Abraham Lincoln. But something is not right. All he is doing is sitting, reading the newspaper, playing handball in the alley near his home and where is that famous beard? How did this happen? Historical figures have […]



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