And the selection of the racist Andrew Johnson as his re-election running mate (not Lincoln’s choice, Meacham points out, and it was a purely political calculation and not an endorsement of Johnson’s integrity). I'm trying to remember if I've read a book about Abraham Lincoln but I don't think I have since elementary school. A couple years ago I read book about John Wilkes Booth which was very good but not Abraham Lincoln. I obviously know alot about him and I've watched countless documentaries about him. I even watched that boring movie starring Daniel Day Lewis. At the age of 8, Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight due to an accident in school. He states that after it happened, he realized that everything has light within it, that everything is flooded with different colors, and that sounds, touch, colors, and light are all interchangeable and can fill in for each other at will. The many experiences he describes as a young boy growing into adolescence without sight, but with all his other senses on hyper alert was a revelation to him. He also described the colors he could see as different musical instruments were played in a concert.

Meacham's book is, in one sense, a prolonged argument against the assertion that Lincoln was a racist. This says so much about our current cultural moment, that the American president who moved heaven and earth and permanently transformed the country in an effort to maintain the union and (yes, secondarily) end slavery, is now as suspicious in the minds of some as actual-slaveowner Thomas Jefferson. How do you think the story would have been different if Jacques had been born blind? What if he had gone blind just before the war?That being the case, historians need to chill out and let the people of the past be themselves, instead of shoehorning them into our present fraught conversations about race. Of course Lincoln is crucial to a historically-informed conversation about this topic, but we should not necessarily set ourselves in judgment over him unless we feel sure that, placed in his position, we would have held more enlightened views. This is an impossible counterfactual to prove, and therefore we should let his deeds speak for themselves and save our judgmental breath to cool our porridge.

This is the framework upon which Jacques Lusseyran’s story is built. There is so much beauty in his story, so many amazing adventures juxtaposed with later deprivation and hardship. Yet through it all, over and over again, his childhood of wondrous discovery coupled with his outstanding intelligence and solid common sense pulled him through with grace and humanity intact. Not only did his inner strength and boundless joy pull him through, it helped him to help others find their way through as well. If you feel starved for truth, grace, humility, and true nobility, meet Mr. Lusseyran. Please! He is there to help. The colonization proposals underscored a tragic reality. One could—and many white Americans did—oppose slavery while failing to engage the prospective creation of a multiracial democracy.” Did it surprise you that the French Nazis were more dangerous to the resistance than the Germans? Or that Jacques’s prisoner roomates were so cruel, or that in the camp there were prisoners who mistreated each other? How do you account for this? What makes some people turnable?All told, however, with the intention of introducing the genius of Lincoln to an audience of people with short attention spans who are predisposed to think everyone who lived before Juneteenth was declared a federal holiday are likely to have had unspeakably racist attitudes, Meacham succeeds. One of the most powerful memoirs I’ve ever encountered...[Lusseyran’s] experience is thrilling, horrible, honest, spiritually profound, and utterly full of joy.”

Meacham spends about half of the book on the pre-presidency life of Lincoln but does not build up the awe and almost myth of Lincoln's unique preparedness for the job like Doris Kearns Goodwin does in the Team of Rivals. Rather, he focuses on Lincoln's thinking about slavery and religion, setting it within the appropriate intellectual environment. While there is definitely the traditional sense of admiration towards Lincoln's perseverance, self-made story and political genius, it feels almost lyrical, rather than apotheotic. Lusseyran, Jacques (2016). Against the Pollution of the I: On the Gifts of Blindness, the Power of Poetry, and the Urgency of Awareness. New World Library. pp.5–. ISBN 978-1-60868-386-4 . Retrieved 8 January 2017. In the fourth year of war, two hundred forty-five years after the arrival of the enslaved at Jamestown, eighty-eight years after the Declaration of Independence, and seventy-six years after the ratification of the Constitution, an American president insisted that a core moral commitment to liberty must survive the vicissitudes of politics, the prejudices of race, and the contests of interest. This is not to separate Lincoln’s moral vision from his political sensibilities—an impossibility—but to underscore that he was acting not only for the moment, not only for dominion in the arena, but for all time.”Daniel, Douglass K (October 24, 2022). "Review: How Meacham's Lincoln defeated 'Big Lie' of his day". Houston Chronicle.