Lincoln The Fire Of Genius

Abraham Lincoln had a lifelong fascination with science and technology, a fascination that would help institutionalize science, win the Civil War, and propel the nation into the modern age. Readers will learn through Lincoln: The Fire of Genius how science and technology gradually infiltrated Lincoln’s remarkable life and influenced his growing desire to improve the condition of all men. The book traces this progression from a simple farm boy to a president who changed the world. Counter to conventional wisdom, subsistence farming provides a considerable education in agronomic science, forest ecology, hydrology, and even a little civil engineering. Continuing through a lifetime of self-study, curiosity, and hard work, Lincoln became the only President with a patent, advocated for technological advancement as a legislator in Illinois and in Washington, and became the “go-to” western lawyer on technology, and patent cases during his legal career. During the Civil War, Lincoln drew upon his commitment to science and personally encouraged inventors while taking dramatic steps to institutionalize science via the Smithsonian Institution, create the National Academy of Sciences, and initiate the Department of Agriculture. Lincoln’s insistence on high-tech weaponry, balloon surveillance, strategic use of telegraphy, and railroad deployment positioned the North to achieve Union victory.

Who was Nikola Tesla? A visionary inventor? Eccentric genius? Outsider rebel? Now David Kent reveals the life, drama, and mystery surrounding the romantic figure. An immigrant from what is now Croatia, Tesla would move to America and go on to create groundbreaking inventions including some that would change the world. He even electrified visitors at the 1893 Chicago World s Fair with an amazing never-before-seen electrical light display. Despite his successes, Tesla would become largely forgotten over the remaining dozen years of his life as others got credit for his remarkable scientific contributions. But after his death, he found renewed fame as the subject of conspiracy theories and as a pop culture idol. Through this fascinating book, you ll come to know the dashing man that continues to capture imaginations today.

This work examines Lincoln’s influence on the strategy of the Civil War and proves convincingly that Lincoln chose good generals and that he was an excellent, if completely unconventional, strategist. The author Brigadier C. R. Ballard, was a British General who saw much service in South Africa and the First World War before being seriously wounded during the battle of the Somme in 1916. “IF ONE wishes to know something about one’s own country, it is often a very good idea to ask a foreigner what he thinks of it. He may not be quite as well informed as a native, and he may not have all his details straight; but the details he does have enable him to form a judgment unaffected by local prejudices and local controversies. That is, by seeing things from a distance, he will have a better grasp of the whole picture.”-Fletcher Pratt

Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of all American presidents, left us a vast legacy of writings, some of which are among the most famous in our history. Lincoln was a marvelous writer—from the humblest letter to his great speeches, including his inaugural addresses, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address. His sentences were so memorably crafted that many resonate across the years. "Fourscore and seven years ago," begins the Gettysburg Address, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." In 1940, the prolific author and historian Philip Van Doren Stern produced this volume as a guide to Lincoln's life through his writings. Stern's "Life of Abraham Lincoln" is a full biography of the man and includes a detailed chronology. Stern has collected all the essential texts of Lincoln's public life, from his first public address—a stump speech in New Salem, Illinois, in 1832 for an election he went on to lose—to his last piece of public writing, a pass to a congressman who was to visit the president the day after Lincoln went to Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865. Some 275 such documents are collected and placed in their historical context. Together with the "Life" and the Introduction, "Lincoln in His Writings," by noted historian Allan Nevins, they give a full and vivid picture of Abraham Lincoln.

"James M. McPherson’s Tried by War is a perfect primer . . . for anyone who wishes to under­stand the evolution of the president’s role as commander in chief. Few histo­rians write as well as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with greater clarity." —The New York Times Book Review The Pulitzer Prize–winning author reveals how Lincoln won the Civil War and invented the role of commander in chief as we know it As we celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, this study by preeminent, bestselling Civil War historian James M. McPherson provides a rare, fresh take on one of the most enigmatic figures in American history. Tried by War offers a revelatory (and timely) portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. Suspenseful and inspiring, this is the story of how Lincoln, with almost no previous military experience before entering the White House, assumed the powers associated with the role of commander in chief, and through his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union.

A nuanced psychological portrait of Abraham Lincoln that finds his legendary political strengths rooted in his most personal struggles. Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the President’s character and his leadership. Mired in personal suffering as a young man, Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health. Shenk draws on seven years of research from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of Lincoln’s unhappiness. In the process, Shenk discovers that the President’s coping strategies—among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection—ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post Book World, Atlanta Journal-Constituion, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette As Featured on the History Channel documentary Lincoln “Fresh, fascinating, provocative.”—Sanford D. Horwitt, San Francisco Chronicle “Some extremely beautiful prose and fine political rhetoric and leaves one feeling close to Lincoln, a considerable accomplishment.”—Andrew Solomon, New York Magazine “A profoundly human and psychologically important examination of the melancholy that so pervaded Lincoln's life.”—Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., author of An Unquiet Mind