Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years –
The Illustrated Edition
By Carl Sandburg; Edited by Edward C. Goodman, Introduction by Alan Axelrod

Illustrated, sources, 463 pp., 2007. Sterling, 387 Park Ave. S, New York, NY 10016, $29.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: James A. Percoco
James A. Percoco teaches U.S. and Applied History at West Springfield High School in Springfield, Va. He is author of A Passion for the Past: Creative Teaching of U.S. History and Divided We Stand: Teaching About Conflict in U.S. History. Percoco is a USA TODAY All-USA teacher and is an adjunct professor in the School of Education at American University where he serves as History Educator-in-Residence.

Review:
Just in time for the kick off of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial, Sterling Publishing Company, with the deft services of Editor Edward C. Goodman, has issued a splendid and lavishly illustrated abridged version of Carl Sandburg’s classic two-volume Lincoln biography, The Prairie Years and The War Years.

Handsomely packaged, this coffee table version will be a welcome addition for those who admire Sandburg’s writing, as well as serving as a terrific introduction to those who have never had the good fortune to encounter his prose.

The accompanying photographs of a wide range of the cast of characters connected to the Lincoln story, woodcuts, paintings, watercolors, images of Lincoln sites and statues, and an array of related memorabilia perfectly augment Sandburg’s narrative.

Regardless of how one views Sandburg’s methodology and approach, particularly with The Prairie Years, one cannot minimize the role Sandburg’s volumes played in Lincoln’s legacy.

Goodman has distilled the essence of the original series into a very approachable and useable format, highlighting all of the seminal Lincoln tales that are mostly familiar to those who claim a deep knowledge of Lincoln lore.
In the fast-paced age of the Internet, cell phones, Youtube and MP3 players, this tidy compilation may just whet the appetite of readers enough for them to consider pursuing reading the entire original publication. If not, it certainly offers a good starting point for anyone who wants to investigate the life of the Sixteenth President, in a cursory manner.

The splendid Introduction written by Alan Axelrod provides a sense of context to Sandburg’s work, particularly offering a glimpse into Sandburg’s life and how that life, which sprang from the Illinois prairie, played out as he became a poet within the measure of Lincoln’s legacy as Sandburg came to see it.

Arguing that even while Sandburg freely admitted his Lincoln is a little mix of man and myth, his contribution to American biographical literature remains in its own way stalwart, singular and important.