Summers with Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments | 
| Author: James A. Percoco
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $12.35
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 603847
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0823228959
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN: 9780823228959
ASIN: 0823228959
Publication Date: March 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Dust jacket has slight shelf wear. Cover, binding, and pages are excellent. Ships the next business day, with tracking and delivery confirmation sent to your email.
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Product Description
Across the country, in the middle of busy city squares and hidden on quiet streets, there are nearly 200 statues erected in memory of Abraham Lincoln. No other American has ever been so widely commemorated.A few years ago, anticipating the bicentennial of Lincolns birth in 2009, Jim Percoco, a history teacher with a passion for both Lincoln and public sculpture, set off to see what he might learn about some of these monumentswhat they meant when they were unveiled, and what they mean to us today. The result is this captivating book, a fascinating chronicle of four summers on the road looking for Lincoln stories in statues of marble and bronze. Of all the monuments, Percoco selects seven emblematic ones. He begins and ends the journey in Washington, starting with Thomas Balls Emancipation Group, erected east of the Capitol in 1876 with private funds from African Americans, and dedicated by Frederick Douglass. Here, Percoco and his multi-ethnic band of teenage historians explore the impact of this Freedmans Monument showing Lincoln and a kneeling freed bondsperson. What does the statute say about race and freedom to todays Americans? What did Balland his sponsorswant it to say? From Augustus Saint-Gaudenss majestic Standing Lincoln of 1887 in Chicago, which helped move our image of Lincoln from great emancipator to that of statesman to Paul Manships 1932 Lincoln the Hoosier Youth, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which glows with an art deco sleekness, Percoco mines a wealth of Lincoln legaciesand our reactions to them expressed across generations. Here are controversial gems like Barnards 1917 tribute in Cincinnati and Borglums Seated Lincoln, struggling with the pain of leadership, beckoning visitors to sit next to him on his metal bench in Newark, New Jersey. At each stop, Percoco chronicles the history of each monument, spotlighting its artistic, social, political, and cultural origins. His descriptions of works so often seen as cliches tease fresh meaning from mute stone and cold metalraising provocative questions not just about who Lincoln might have been, but also about what weve wanted him to be in the monuments weve built.
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| Customer Reviews:
Read this and feel enlightened June 26, 2008
Though we may try to bury it in our thoughts and hearts and souls, we all realize that we are just passing through--that life is as short as a snap of the fingers. Most of us, no matter how important or loved we feel, will never accomplish anything extraordinary and be captured in stone. However, President Lincoln left historic footprints and his image has been cast in ink, paint, metal and stone. Author Jim Percoco in this fine book empowers readers to not only grasp Lincoln caught forever in sculptures, Percoco in his very personal and insightful writing style empowers us to feel that we are part of history and mankind. I learned details that still nudge my thoughts daily and came away from this read feeling blessed to have discovered it. Highly recommended.
A "must have" for Lincoln enthusiasts May 16, 2008
Summers with Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments
This book is a "must have" for anyone who is interested casually or seriously in Abraham Lincoln. It looks at the most studied President of the United States and yet adds new value through the dimension of his many memorials. It is both an insightful and novel approach. Percoco conceys Lincoln's character through interpretations of the monuments by getting inside the minds of Lincoln's many sculptors. It has relevance to modern experiences and the values of today's youthful scholars. It is based on a well-grounded, historical expertise and proceeds to rile up the reader's interest. It vibrantly captures the emotions and themes that were meant to be instilled by the creators of Lincoln's memorial scultures.
William N. Stryker
author and historian
Our Lincoln Mania Explained March 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Everywhere you look in the United States there seems to be a statue of Lincoln. From Washington, DC, to Fort Wayne, IN, from Cincinnati, OH, to Newark, NJ, our nation's parks, squares, and town halls are dotted with sculptures of the sixteenth president. Over the course of four summers, teacher and author James Percoco traveled to learn first-hand about our nation's mania to put up stone and metal remembrances of Lincoln. He discovered a Lincoln who in death has come to embody each generation's idealistic hopes for a leader; a kind of stand-in for "the better angels of our nature," to quote Lincoln himself. In some ways it is not Lincoln, the president, war leader, or emancipator whom these sculptures commemorate but the Lincoln of our imaginations. A cross between "Blue Highways" by William Least Heat-Moon, and "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck, Percoco's "Summers with Lincoln" makes for thought-provoking reading about an important part of the American landscape.
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