Winner, Lincoln Group of New York Award of Achievement 2019
From multiple personal tragedies to the terrible carnage of the Civil War, death might be alongside emancipation of the slaves and restoration of the Union as one of the great central truths of Abraham Lincoln’s life. Yet what little has been written specifically about Lincoln and death is insufficient, sentimentalized, or devoid of the rich historical literature about death and mourning during the nineteenth century. The Black Heavens: Abraham Lincoln and Death is the first in-depth account of how the sixteenth president responded to the riddles of mortality, undertook personal mourning, and coped with the extraordinary burden of sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to be killed on battlefields.
Going beyond the characterization of Lincoln as a melancholy, tragic figure, Brian R. Dirck investigates Lincoln’s frequent encounters with bereavement and sets his response to death and mourning within the social, cultural, and political context of his times. At a young age Lincoln saw the grim reality of lives cut short when he lost his mother and sister. Later, he was deeply affected by the deaths of two of his sons, three-year-old Eddy in 1850 and eleven-year-old Willie in 1862, as well as the combat deaths of close friends early in the war. Despite his own losses, Lincoln learned how to approach death in an emotionally detached manner, a survival skill he needed to cope with the reality of his presidency.
Dirck shows how Lincoln gradually turned to his particular understanding of God’s will in his attempts to articulate the meaning of the atrocities of war to the American public, as showcased in his allusions to religious ideas in the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. Lincoln formed a unique approach to death: both intellectual and emotional, typical and yet atypical of his times. In showing how Lincoln understood and responded to death, both privately and publicly, Dirck paints a compelling portrait of a commander in chief who buried two sons and gave the orders that sent an unprecedented number of Americans to their deaths. 2019年纽约林肯集团成就奖获得者,从多重个人悲剧到南北战争的可怕屠杀,死亡可能与奴隶解放和合众国的重建并驾齐驱,成为亚伯拉罕 · 林肯一生中最重要的真理之一。然而,关于林肯和死亡的具体描写很少,这是不充分的,伤感的,或缺乏丰富的关于19世纪死亡和哀悼的历史文献。《黑色的天堂: 亚伯拉罕 · 林肯与死亡》是第十六任总统如何应对死亡之谜,承担个人哀悼,以及如何应对派遣数十万士兵在战场上被杀害这一非同寻常的负担的第一部深入记录。布莱恩 · 迪尔克超越了林肯的角色塑造,成为一个忧郁的悲剧人物,他调查了林肯频繁遭遇丧亲之痛的经历,并在他所处时代的社会、文化和政治背景下,设定了他对死亡和哀悼的回应。年轻时,林肯看到了生命的残酷现实,当他失去了他的母亲和妹妹。后来,他深受两个儿子的死亡的影响,三岁的艾迪在1850年,十一岁的威利在1862年,以及战争初期亲密朋友的战死。尽管失去了亲人,林肯还是学会了,如何以一种超然的态度面对死亡,这是他在总统任期内,所需要的一种生存技能。迪克展示了林肯如何逐渐转向他对上帝意志的独特理解,试图向美国公众阐明战争暴行的意义,正如他在哥底斯堡演说和第二次就职典礼中提到的宗教思想。林肯形成了一种独特的死亡方式: 智力和情感,典型但不典型的他的时代。为了展示林肯对死亡的理解和反应,无论是私下的还是公开的,迪克描绘了一个令人信服的总司令的形象,他埋葬了两个儿子,并下令让数量空前的美国人去送死。 基本信息 出版社 : Southern Illinois University Press; 第 1st 版 (2019年2月6日) 语言 : 英语 精装 : 240页 ISBN-10 : 0809337029 ISBN-13 : 978-0809337026 商品重量 : 475 g 尺寸 : 15.24 x 2.54 x 22.86 cm
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