Meacham’s comprehensive history (there’s nine hours of tape before Lincoln is even elected president) will certainly equip you to hold your own next time you find yourself in conversation with a Civil War buff. “To see him only as a political creature,” Meacham says, “is to give the means of his life priority over its ends.” But on the whole, Meacham’s meticulously researched portrait reveals a man who, while riddled with imperfections and inconsistencies, genuinely believed in the human instinct to do good. Meacham takes a measured approach, unafraid to point out the moments when Lincoln capitulated to political pressures, like when he decided “to stay on the conservative side of antislavery” in late 1861-62, as the Union faced mounting losses. We learn of the conversations - both internal and otherwise - that were a constant backdrop to the history Lincoln was making.Īs Meacham points out, many historians are concerned with whether Lincoln truly was the “Great Emancipator,” a saintly figure with a lifelong commitment to equality and liberty or simply “a white American man engaged in the accumulation and exercise of power,” leaning on morality only when it was politically convenient. We learn of the books and pivotal experiences that shaped his moral outlook and his eventual emancipation of the country’s enslaved people.

In a calm, deliberate narration that matches the crispness of his prose, Meacham zeros in on Lincoln the human being. What else is there to say, I wondered, about one of our most studied, most written about, most fiercely debated figures in our nation’s history? A lot, it turns out.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached AND THERE WAS LIGHT: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Random House Audio, 17 hours, 49 minutes), by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Jon Meacham. In the world of American history, there is perhaps no genre more written-to-oblivion than the presidential biography. But what if we reimagined the word in the context of the lifelong learner, not as a chore but as the channel to a joy that can be had from staying with a single subject for hours, from revisiting it again and again, even when you think there’s nothing else to learn? Treading mostly on well-trodden ground, three new audiobooks prove that no matter how much you think you know about a subject, there’s always more to study - in a way that isn’t a drag. For many, the word “studying” conjures unpleasant memories: of impending exams, caffeine-fueled all-nighters, the frustration of just not getting it.

Jon meacham and there was light