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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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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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The Mindful Body

Many things that we think are beyond our reach are actually within our grasp. Many things that we think we can’t control—such as our health, or that nagging ache in our lower back, or our general outlook on life—are actually controllable. Many of the limitations in our lives exist only in our heads.

The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health considers what happens when we learn how to take control of our health and wellbeing. Psychologist Ellen Langer, who has written widely on the illusion of control, mindful aging, stress, decision-making, and health. explores the new psychology of possibility, highlighting new research that shows how the mind can help treat a long list of illnesses and ailments that were previously assumed to be entirely physical. It builds on her groundbreaking work on mindfulness, and shows how simple thinking techniques can become a potent medical tool, reducing our symptoms, increasing our resilience and extending our lives.

The tragic truth is that too many people are depressed, stressed, and living in pain. They accept sickness as the inevitable status quo. They believe that psychological and physical discomfort are simply a part of life. Others are convinced that “this is as good as it gets,” and that they don’t deserve better. They will always be exhausted. Their eyes will always need glasses. They will keep getting weaker.

Ellen Langer’s essential work suggests that much more is possible. If we free ourselves from certain pervasive and constricting mindsets, such as the belief that stress is inescapable, or that being older means being sick, or that there can be no relief from chronic pain, then all sorts of possibilities may present themselves. If we learn to apply these new techniques, the mind can literally heal the body.

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The People’s Champ

Legal aid, the program through which legal assistance is made available to people who cannot otherwise afford it, has had a controversial history.  Support for providing legal services has waxed and waned.  But while it has not always received widespread acclaim, legal aid has been a legal lifeline for people who would not otherwise have access to some measure of justice.

In The People’s Champ: Legal Aid from Slavery to Mass Incarceration, legal scholar Shaun Ossei-Owusu provides a broad history of legal aid in America.  He locates its origins much earlier than has typically been assumed, looking back to the antebellum period when abolitionists actively sought legal rights for fugitive slaves and the white citizens who gave them assistance.

This sweeping narrative of America’s legal aid efforts also reveals how central race was, and continues to be, to the delivery of legal services.  While the conventional assumption is that legal aid was focused on the poor, irrespective of race, Ossei-Owusu shows how race has always been central to the way in which legal aid programs operated.  This perspective illuminates another angle on the history of discrimination, incarceration, and the delivery of social justice in this country.

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Prison

The United States has a prison problem. Many of the statistics are, by now, well known: the country’s prison population has grown by more than 500 percent since 1973. Today, more than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in over 6,000 jails, prisons, and detention centers nationwide. Another five million live under some form of correctional supervision or control. Almost everyone who is incarcerated, and millions who once were, cannot vote or access other public services. Most of them are poor, and an overwhelming number of them are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and/or suffering from a physical or mental disability. The United States stands alone among industrialized nations in retaining the death penalty, the widespread use of long-term solitary confinement, and the incarceration of juveniles in adult prisons. From preventable deaths to popular disenfranchisement, this carceral archipelago shapes the whole country.

Prison: An American History tells the story of the country through its enduring use of incarceration. Forced confinement enabled European settlers and their descendants to take Indigenous land, and it was a fundamental component of slavery—both the transatlantic slave trade and its domestic equivalent made widespread use of chains and cages. In the century after the Civil War, incarcerated people industrialized much of the country while prison development strengthened both federal and state local government. Since World War II, successive wars on communism, crime, drugs, gangs, and terror have made the country through prison. Nearly every moment in the country’s history can be understood through its reliance on captivity. From matters of labor discipline to political activism and beyond, prison helps explain the rise of the United States. 

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