The Garamond Agency

David

The Lincoln Miracle

Winner of the Harold Holzer Lincoln Forum Book Prize

Winner of the Lincoln Institute Book Prize

Winner of the Lincoln Group of New York Award of Achievement

The leadup to the presidential election of 1860 found America bitterly divided, as the dominant Democratic Party broke up over the intense pressure of slavery, and the six-year-old Republican Party sought a leader who could win. The story of the convention to name the Republican Party’s candidate – eight days that led to Abraham Lincoln’s nomination – makes clear that Lincoln’s extraordinary quest to lead the party might have collapsed, with fatal consequences for the United States of America.

The convention was held in Chicago, although Lincoln himself waited for news from Springfield, far from the heavy drinking, humor, jealousy, political animosities, and angling for power that were the stuff of political life of the times. The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History plunges the reader right into the convention, to experience the sights, sounds and smells of Chicago in 1860. The tension-filled maneuvering of the political players and the candidates’ managers echo the forces buffeting the nation — particularly over slavery and Lincoln’s vision for ending it. 

With its secretive and sordid horse-trading, the convention allows us to see Lincoln’s strengths as a political strategist. His plan played out perfectly against long odds, thanks to the hard work of friends whose extraordinary loyalty he had the gift of cultivating. The Lincoln Miracle opens a window on the tremendous political forces tearing America apart as it lurched toward the bloody and catastrophic Civil War.

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The Newspaper Axis

Winner of the 2023 Sperber Prize, awarded by Fordham University. 

In the years leading up to World War II, people purchased and read a stunning number of newspapers. And while elite journalists often overlooked the influence of America’s most popular newspapers, the newspapers that people actually read (as opposed to the ones that they said that they read) would shape the political and foreign policy debate in America in surprising ways. Most of the top-selling newspapers in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s were anti-Democratic, anti-New Deal, and anti-liberal. All of them were vehemently isolationist on foreign policy.

In The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler, historian Kathryn Olmsted explores the story of the American media moguls—and their British counterparts—who used their newspaper empires to champion the isolationist cause in the years leading up to the Second World War, and makes a case for its significance in the history of the Right.

The papers that were controlled by William Randolph Hearst, Robert McCormick, Joe Patterson, and Cissy Patterson in the US, and by Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook in the UK, had a vast following. In the US, the Hearst/McCormick/Patterson papers reached more than seven million readers a day—far outpassing the numbers that Fox News boasts of today. The conservative stance that they promoted would shape the political and foreign policy debates of the time, constraining the ability of western democracies to respond to the rise of fascism.

Echoes of the anti-intellectualism championed by McCormick and the other media barons of the time can be found today. And to understand the rise of the conservative right of the 21st century we need to appreciate how the press barons of the US and the UK worked together to undermine the response to Hitler in the 1930s.

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Access Rules

How do we legitimize – and limit – the power of knowledge?

Control over information in a data-driven world is shifting in favor of those who generate, store and analyze information flows on their digital platforms. This isn’t a new issue – since the days of Benjamin Franklin, information power has been turned upside down. But today, data colonialists in America and Asia rule the rest of the world.

To counter the power imbalances that are increasing as a result of these power shifts, we have to prise open access to data, information and knowledge. We need much more broadly-based access to data to advance scientific, social and economic progress in the service of sustainable development. Concentration of information power is good for a few, but bad for innovation, cooperation, and for each and every one of us.

In Access Rules, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge offer a clear, concise and compelling response, arguing that if we disrupt the monopoly power of superstar companies with open access to data, and create a level playing field, digital innovations can emerge to the benefit all. When everyone has access to the informational riches of the data age, the nature of digital power machines will change. Information technology will find its way back to its original purpose: empowering all of us to use information so we can thrive as individuals and as societies.

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Strength in Numbers

The question, “can we trust the polls?” has been the headline for countless articles. After the 2020 election, pundits, politicians, and prognosticators were even more worried than they had been in 2016 about whether polling was in a crisis.

Indeed, polling has not kept up with changes in technology and in voter behavior. But while forecasters failed to anticipate the election of Donald Trump in 2016 or his strength in 2020, the accuracy of polls in those elections, as well as in midterms and various special elections has been pretty much average by historical standards.

In Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them, G. Elliott Morris urges us to resist the idea that polls are worthless and untrustworthy and instead to focus on why saving them is critical to the survival of our democratic system. As the data journalist for the Economist, Elliott covers polls and elections for the magazine. And in his book, he looks at the history of polling to explain how we got to where we are today – and considers ways in which the industry can and must change to adapt to a wave of social, economic and technological challenges.

As polling and pollsters sort out their place in our political lives, Elliott Morris is ideally placed to reflect on the contribution they can and must play in preserving our democracy.

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Liberty’s Grid

Mastery over the vast spaces of the continent has engendered controversy ever since Americans began looking west. In Liberty’s Grid, A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America, Amir Alexander puts readers into the middle of a clash between two incompatible visions of American space. According to one vision, the American continent is empty, nothing but a vast unresisting terrain awaiting its settlers to make their mark. And according to the other, the land is already full to the brim, rich in wonders both natural and human, which settlers would disrupt at their peril.

Each of these visions left deep marks on the continent. Those who believed that America is a blank slate, and ripe for the taking, set out to mark it with an immense mathematical grid that covered both its rural and urban spaces. Those who believed that America’s strength lies in its natural wonders countered the grid at every step, instituting natural-style urban parks at the heart of rectilinear cities, leafy suburbs on their margins, and national parks and preserves throughout the rural grid. The struggle between these two conflicting yet intertwined visions has been going on for two centuries, and has informed not only the physical landscape, but the political one as well.

In his previous two books, Infinitesimal and Proof!, Amir Alexander chronicled the roles that mathematical ideas have played in the creation of the modern world. In Liberty’s Grid, he brings that story to America, and deepens our appreciation of the landscapes that we all know.

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