"He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh." -- Adlai Stevenson, quoting Abraham Lincoln, after losing the presidential election to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.In defeat as well as in victory, the nation's 16th president can be relied upon to deliver the right words for the situation."Lincoln was the (Mark) Twain of our politics," says Fred Kaplan, author of "Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer" (Harper, $27.95)."Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and addressed his contemporary audience or posterity with equal and enduring effectiveness."Kaplan's book, an inquiry into the material and intelligence that created Lincoln's legendary eloquence, is among several dozen to emerge this year and will appear early in 2009 about the great man, a wave that now dominates the nonfiction market.He argues that because this self-educated politician turned himself into a "genius as an artist with words," Lincoln is the author of his own enduring legend.The main explanation for this flood of words is the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, Feb. 12, 1809, in the most humble of American surroundings, a log cabin near Elizabethtown, Ky.Like many myths, his "humble origins" were exaggerated. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a major landowner in Kentucky, providing a secure childhood that gave the young boy the luxury to read books.And books as well as his moving speeches were the basis for the mythology that continues unabated today. The legend-making began as Lincoln began his campaign for the presidential nomination in 1860, when a 23-year-old newspaperman from Martins Ferry, Ohio, wrote his "official" campaign biography.William Dean Howells' "The Life of Abraham Lincoln" not only introduced voters to this little-known, inexperienced candidate from Illinois, but launched one of the 19th-century's most influential literary careers.Howells, who never met Lincoln, wrote the book from a researcher's notes and rushed it into print without his subject's approval. Lincoln then made changes in the margins of the first edition, and the changes were then incorporated in later releases, in essence creating an image that sold his candidacy to the country.This story is among a wide-ranging and fascinating collection of anecdotes in "Looking for Lincoln: The Making of An American Icon" by Philip Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. (Knopf, $50).Their book is a companion to a PBS television program on Lincoln's life, to air early next year. It's a real storehouse of information that chronicles the growth of the Lincoln "industry" now working at full capacity.Similar large-format titles are "The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary" by Candace Fleming (Schwartz and Wade, $29.99) and "Lincoln Shot: A President's Life Remembered" by Barry Denenberg (Feiwel and Friends, a MacMillan imprint, $24.95).Both are for young readers, as is "Chasing Lincoln's Killer" by James Swanson (Scholastic, $16.99, February), a condensed version of "Manhunt," his 2006 adult best seller.Biographies of Lincoln, aside from Howells', would fill several bookshelves. Their writers include many academic historians, but also journalist Ida M. Tarbell and poet Carl Sandburg.The latest in the current wave are Ronald C. White Jr.'s "A. Lincoln" (Random House, $35, January), running to more than 650 pages, and two brief biographies, "Abraham Lincoln: The American Presidents Series" by George McGovern, the former presidential candidate (Times Books, $22, January), and "Abraham Lincoln" by James McPherson (Oxford University Press, $12.95, February). McPherson is the award-winning author of "Battle Cry of Freedom" and has contributed a new book to the wave, "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander In Chief" (The Penguin Press, $35). Interesting for military buffs.Moving from land to sea is Craig L. Symonds in "Lincoln and His Admirals" (Oxford University Press, $27.95). He's a professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy."1864: Lincoln At the Gates of History" by Charles Bracelen Flood (Simon & Schuster, $30, February) examines the tumultuous election year and battlefield successes and reversals leading to Lincoln's triumph the next year.The president's relationships are analyzed in these volumes:"Lincoln's Men: The President and his Private Secretaries" by Daniel Mark Epstein (Collins, $26.95, February), "Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln" by John Stauffer (Twelve, $30), a dual study of the two abolition figures, and "Mrs. Lincoln: A Life" by Catherine Clinton (Harper, $26.95, January), which traces the difficult life of the former first lady.Everyone, it seems, had something to say about Honest Abe, hence the anthology format collecting comments and opinions:-- "Abraham Lincoln: Great American Historians on Our Sixteenth President," edited by Brian Lamb and Susan Swain (Public Affairs, $27.95), is a distillation of comments by guests of C-SPAN shows.-- "Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World," edited by Eric Foner (Norton, $27.95), covers a lot of territory with its collection of contributions from respected historians.-- "The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy From 1869 to Now," edited by Harold Holzer (Library of America, $40, January), includes selections from Howells' book as well as Barack Obama's speech announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Ill.Holzer has also written "Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861" (Simon & Schuster, $30).This is not an inclusive list. Many more books remain to be published on Lincoln as the bicentennial grows closer, but this compilation should give you plenty of material until Feb. 12 rolls around.(E-mail Bob Hoover at bhoover(at)post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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