PositiveThe Washington Post... an account of the life of the United States’ 16th president that is worldly and spiritual, and carefully tailored to suit our conflict-ridden times ... Meacham’s new Lincoln is not just a text; it is an event. The book aims to recraft a usable mythology of Lincoln for political leaders in the 21st century, when dissension and loose talk of civil war have returned. It is thoroughly researched and highly readable, written with all the artful craftsmanship of a veteran writer and editor. The book is not especially long for a contemporary biography; it clocks in at just over 400 pages of text. But it boasts more than 200 additional pages of endnotes and bibliography in support of an interpretation of Lincoln that focuses on the moral life of the politician and statesman ... Meacham’s lucid account nicely captures the religious framework with which Lincoln approached the most difficult decisions of his presidency ... stands for the claim that the demigods of American historical mythology, Lincoln foremost among them, can help us carve paths through our forbidding 21st-century wilderness. But can Lincoln do the work Meacham sets for him? Can a man who took part in the final genocidal clash of White settlers with Indians east of the Mississippi rally a multiethnic democracy to the flag? Can a man who opposed Black citizenship until the end of his life mobilize a diverse coalition of voters? What, moreover, does Lincoln’s moral North Star — the Declaration’s ringing promise of equality for all — mean today? Does it mean higher progressive tax rates for the 1 percent, or perhaps more student debt relief? Does it mean an end to race-based government action, or a rededication of the nation to the principle that Black lives matter? Is the next Lincoln a teenager who wants action on climate change — but is prepared to make compromises in bringing the world closer to carbon neutrality? Faced with such challenges, we owe it to one another to pray we do our best. And that is Meacham’s deadly serious point.
Kate Masur
RaveThe Washington PostMasur wants to know what led increasingly influential politicians to adopt the view that Black people ought to \'have all the rights and privileges and immunities\' that \'every citizen\' had. In Masur’s account, the answer is a now-forgotten social mobilization of Black civil rights advocates who fought alongside White allies not only to undermine slavery but to establish basic equality for Blacks in the free states of the North ... Masur’s heroes are the social activists ... Masur’s book illuminates just how much was at stake in the fight over Black citizenship ... Masur’s fresh perspective lets us see famous episodes in a new light ... Masur’s book is a brilliant meditation on progress and its limits. Activists creatively targeted weak spots in the Constitution. In the 14th Amendment, they essentially established a second American republic ... Masur’s monumental account leaves no doubt that a generation of 19th-century racial egalitarians altered history. They forced white supremacists to change course, and they created resources used ever since by advocates in the fight for equality.
Ruth Marcus
PositiveThe New Republic... a deeply reported, hour-by-hour account of the partisan battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination and the fallout, using her Washington sources to weave a political page-turner ... But more than a story about the court, her book is also about what a career in law did to Kavanaugh—how at each stage of advancement, the institutions he passed through made him an inexorably more partisan figure ... In Marcus’s story, the most striking thing about the confirmation process that ensued was its ever-escalating partisan logic ... Marcus ends her book by wondering whether the neutral ideal of the court can survive the bruising battle of Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. [Adam] Cohen’s history [Supreme Inequality] asks how such an ideal has lasted as long as it has. Yet neither book quite satisfactorily explains why the court has been so susceptible to polarization—or why Republicans have benefited from it so disproportionately.
Brenda Wineapple
PositiveThe Washington Post... a stunningly well-timed book on a question ripped from the headlines ... Wineapple’s timely story suggests, almost despite itself, that impeaching presidents and dreaming of justice are no substitutes for the work of doing justice and winning elections.
Richard Brookhiser
MixedThe New Republic\"The difficulty for Brookhiser is that his life of Marshall is too detailed and careful to sustain such mythmaking. In Brookhiser’s short and captivating biography, Marshall emerges as the institution’s first great partisan operative: a man who managed with extraordinary success to reassemble a judicial branch in American government from the broken pieces of the Federalist Party ... Brookhiser’s account captures much of the chief justice’s high-wire act [of Marbury v. Madison]... Yet Brookhiser’s version of the case misses the key step, one that reveals the full extent of Marshall’s political project in the crisis ... Brookhiser’s narrative shares the great shortcoming of a very common misreading of Chief Justice Marshall. It minimizes the politics at the heart of Marshall’s project. Brookhiser’s updated version of the conventional story presents Marshall as the Atlas of American law, hoisting the Constitution upon his broad apolitical shoulders. Understating the politics of the court’s founding years, however, is misleading.\
Lisa McGirr
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMs. McGirr’s book points to the wisdom of Prohibition’s repeal—and rightly calls on us to step back from the counterproductive policies of our own time.
