The author also traces Lincoln’s evolution from bookish farm boy to trial lawyer to politician, a progression aided by the rise of the new Republican Party, whose views largely matched his own. Light is often used as a metaphor in the Bible, and the word illumination (“divine enlightenment of the human heart with truth”) has to do with bringing things into the light.

Those who follow manifestation believe they can speak things into being or make all their wishes come true by simply believing it. For Meacham, Lincoln is above all “an example of how even the most imperfect of people, leading the most imperfect of peoples,” can bend the arc of the universe toward justice.

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle was such an engaging book by one of my favorite historians, Jon Meacham. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans, Lincoln's story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events. As a young boy, the future president would memorize and repeat the sermons of local pastors, and he read voraciously even though, other than the Bible, not many books were readily available on the frontier. I also listened to the audiobook (excellently narrated by the author), which ended at about the 41% point of the ebook.

Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Lincoln’s shadow hovered over Meacham’s childhood, long before he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for providing an advance copy of this book for review, ahead of its October 25th release. By following Him, we will be able to help others come to know Him and accept Him as their Savior and Lord.But if this book helps to refute and drown out some of the noise from the anti-Lincoln extremes, perhaps there is something our modern-day leaders can learn from Lincoln after all. With his latest work, Pulitzer Prize—winning biographer Meacham (the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt Univ. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographerJon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how-and why-he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America. In about his fortieth year, around 1850, Abraham Lincoln folded his long, angular frame into a one-horse buggy in Springfield, Illinois, for the nineteen-mile trip from the capital city to the courthouse in Petersburg, the seat of neighboring Menard County. Lincoln would come to see democracy as a work in progress, a process in which reason took its chances against prejudice and passion. But writing about “the battle to preserve the possibilities of the American experience,” as he put it, did leave Meacham with a sense of hope for the people of our “fallen, frail and fallible” country. I have read other Lincoln biographies so I was familiar with a lot of this material, but this book took a slightly different approach to Lincoln’s complicated story.The phrase let there be light could be confusing to some modern English speakers who are used to using the word let in the context of permission, as in “Let me out of this box” or “Let me have the last cookie. Jon Meacham’s acute understanding of American politics yields a singularly illuminating portrait of the greatest political leader in our history.