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| Lincoln's Ladies: The Women in the Life of the Sixteenth President | | Author: | H. Donald Winkler | ISBN: | 1581824254 | Format: | Handover | Publish Date: | June, 2005 | | | | | | | | | Book Review | | |
Book Description The tumultuous experiences Abraham Lincoln had with women have long been chronicled. Lincolns Ladies attempts to answer the questions of how he was affected by the women in his life and how he affected them. Abandoned through death by his mother, his sister, and his sweetheart, Ann Rutledge, Lincoln found it difficult to relate to women and developed an emotional barrier that often antagonized them. Abstract and cool, he feared intimacy and marriage and, following Ann Rutledges untimely death, was incapable of loving anyone the way he had loved her, probably the only woman with whom he shared a deep and wonderful love. Lincoln fumbled his way through other courtships and was turned down at least twice. He then stumbled into a strange relationship with Mary Toddone culminated by marriage through her trickery and his sense of "honor." Lincolns marriage to her was his greatest tragedy, "a burning, scorching hell as terrible as death and as gloomy as the grave," said William Herndon, Lincolns partner and biographer. According to H. Donald Winkler, Lincolns emotions and motivations were shaped from a mixture of crippling and energizing experiences associated with women, experiences that profoundly affected his personal and professional lives. Lincolns Ladies explores the impact of more than thirty women on his life. Not overlooked, however, are the positive impacts of women on Lincoln and he on them, especially his stepmother, who probably was the first person to treat him with respect and glimpse his potential.
About the Author H. DONALD WINKLER is an award-winning journalist, historian, and political scientist. Founder of East-West Perspectives, named the nations outstanding education magazine in 1981, he is the author of "Lincoln and Booth" and lives in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Lincoln's Ladies: The Women in the Life of the Sixteenth President
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