Publication date:
15 January 2012Length of book:
216 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442209541
From Lincoln-themed cocktails and waffle-parlors to high-tech museums and steamy romance novels, the image of Abraham Lincoln so permeates the national imagination that we now find him in the unlikeliest of places. In Lincoln, Inc., Jackie Hogan examines the uses (and abuses) of the sixteenth president in the United States today. The book takes readers on a journey through the little white lies of Lincoln tourism, and offers a front-row seat as the martyr president is invoked in heated political debates over such issues as homosexuality, abortion, and the “war on terror.” Readers enter classrooms that use an idealized Honest Abe to “Lincolnize” American schoolchildren. And readers step into the alternate universe of Lincoln fiction that transforms the Rail Splitter, by turns, into a hapless time-traveler, a sentimental cyborg, an axe-wielding zombie slayer, or a frontier heart-throb.
But Lincoln, Inc. is more than a tour through the thriving “Lincoln industry” today. Whether in staid biographies, blockbuster films, school pageants, or sleeping pill advertisements, Hogan shows how the use of the Lincoln image reveals the nation’s shared fears and fascinations. The book analyzes the ways we employ Lincoln today in our political, ideological, personal, and national struggles; the ways we simultaneously deify and commercially exploit him; the ways he is packaged and sold in the marketplace of American ideas. In learning about “Lincoln, Inc.,” we learn about ourselves, about who we think we are, and who we wish we could be.
But Lincoln, Inc. is more than a tour through the thriving “Lincoln industry” today. Whether in staid biographies, blockbuster films, school pageants, or sleeping pill advertisements, Hogan shows how the use of the Lincoln image reveals the nation’s shared fears and fascinations. The book analyzes the ways we employ Lincoln today in our political, ideological, personal, and national struggles; the ways we simultaneously deify and commercially exploit him; the ways he is packaged and sold in the marketplace of American ideas. In learning about “Lincoln, Inc.,” we learn about ourselves, about who we think we are, and who we wish we could be.
More books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other president. Hogan (sociology, Bradley Univ.) adds an indispensable addition to this vast realm. The author sampled biographies, textbooks, children's books, films, museums, and historic sites related to Lincoln to suggest that Lincoln the icon has come to represent the nation as a whole, or what Americans wish to believe about the nation. Lincoln especially embodies the American dream of upward mobility and opportunity. His image changed over time from the saintly, reverential portrayals of the early twentieth century to later speculation about depression or homosexuality or his marriage with Mary Todd Lincoln. Most sources praise Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, savior of the Union, and advocate of racial equality. They omit his statements about an innate difference between the races that would forbid them from living together as equals, statements favoring colonization of blacks out of the country, or indulgence in 'darky' jokes. Hogan suggests Americans ignore Lincoln's less than exemplary traits because they do not want to see them in themselves. The sanitized Lincoln narrative 'offers affirmation of white nobility and absolution for racist sins of the past.' Outstanding, balanced, and provocative. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.