I have been meaning to look at that Holzer book. I heard him being interviewed on WILL and it sounded interesting. One nice thing about WILL is that they archive their interviews so if anyone is interested you can listen to Holzer talking about his recent book.
http://will.illinois.edu/focus580/interview/focus081128a/While I was looking on WILL site I saw that there is going to be a special on WILL TV on February 9th at &:00 pm. Here is a description of the program.
Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency
A television documentary by WILL Public Media
As a lawyer traveling Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit, Abraham Lincoln made two simultaneous journeys. He gained respect as a skilled attorney and mesmerizing speaker, but he also built a political base and refined his views on the important issues of the day, many of which he would face in the White House.
His experiences from 1837 to 1860 on muddy roads, in homes of friends and in courtrooms on the circuit guided him when he became president. WILL-TV’s Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency tells the story of the cases he tried and people he met during this critical period of his life.
“That’s where he really got a sense of the various kinds of problems people faced,” said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of the experts featured in the documentary. “He got a sense of the exuberance of their dreams and their hopes. In a certain sense, I think it was the root of his political education.”
Features:
* Reenactments of Lincoln as you’ve never seen him before: defending a slaveholder trying to reclaim a slave named Jane Bryant and her children; brandishing a sword on the banks of the Mississippi River at dawn before being talked out of fighting a duel; and crossing the prairie reading a book atop his horse, Old Tom.
* Interviews with experts, including Doris Kearns Goodwin, Edna Greene Medford and Orville Vernon Burton, who describe how the circuit built the skills Lincoln used as president.
http://will.illinois.edu/lincoln/
