With the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America Garry Wills performs a literary dissection of sorts of a prominent American document, examining both its structure & function in an exceedingly formal & intricate manner. The author looks at Abraham Lincoln's very brief 3 minute statement at Gettysburg in terms of the classic rhetorical formats of Greek & Rome. But beyond that, he juxtaposes Lincoln's comments with those of the president of Harvard Univers...

A REVIEW in 292: Fundamentally, the thing I love about criticism is the ability to read a damn fine book about a damn fine speech and recognize the author of the book wrote a little more than a page for every word in the Gettysburg Address. If you count appendixes and notes (and why wouldn't you when the appendix and notes matter?). I once teased my wife, during my early wooing stage, that I wanted to write an ode to every hair on her head (loads of odes). Garry Wills did. This book is both acad...

This year my "Reading Challenge" is to re-read 10 books to see how they hold up to my memory. There is quite a bit in this book that I forgot over 15 years.If you asked me last week, I'd have told you it was about the use of rhetorical devices and how this style of oratory harkens back to the Greek tradition. I would not have remembered nor told you it shows how Lincoln recast the meaning of the war and fixed the Declaration of Independence as subordinate to Constitution (as noted in the title);...

Lincoln was a “radical” in both senses: he broke with tradition by returning to the roots. The heart of Wills’s book is Lincoln’s elevation of the Declaration of Independence as a transcendental text above the earthly and provisional Constitution. The Constitution, with its tolerance of slavery, was felt by Lincoln and other transcendentalist political thinkers to require renewal by the Declaration, whose unequivocal proposition of equality for all constitutes the moral center of the American sy...

A New Birth Of FreedomThe Battle of Gettysburg, a pivotal event in the Civil War, raged from July 1 to July 3, 1863. It was the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere and ended the Confederacy's second invasion of the North. Following the battle, the community of Gettysburg was thick with dead and wounded men. The Governor of Pennsylvania authorized the purchase of a cemetery for the reburial of the Union dead. The cemetery was dedicated in a ceremony on November 19, 1863. Edward E...

Just a beautiful piece of work that is also possibly the best book I've read on Abraham Lincoln. For one, Wills does a wonderful job of analyzing Lincoln's influences, from the Transcendentalism of Emerson and Theodore Parker to the oratory of the Greek revival movement to Romanticism, and all of it is so lucidly described and densely packed together that I often had to put the book down to absorb it all or think on it for a moment. Wills' main point though is that the Gettysburg Address, by mak...

An interesting and scholarly book on Lincoln and his speech at Gettysburg. Great information, but a bit dry at times. I appreciate this book's importance to USA History and can see why it won a Pulitzer.

This book contains so much interesting information about Lincoln and his speeches, but I can't say I really enjoyed reading it. The style wasn't my favorite, and I wish there had been more about the Gettysburg Address. It wasn't quite what I expected and I thought some parts seemed a little out of place and unnecessary in a book that's purportedly about a single speech.

My Overall Impressions:Masterful.Cognitive.Coherent.Well Organized.Well Documented.Some of the Rhetorical Basics are covered here. Wills describes the delivery of the Gettysburg Address in terms ofThe Communication Triangle of Speaker, Message, Listener Context: ForumPresentationBeing a Funerary/Memorial Service, Lincoln also uses the epainesis of the heroic death. Epainesis was used in the tradition of Pericles' funerary oration given in honor of heroes as recorded in History of the Peloponnesi...

Why does it take Garry Wills 317 pages to explain Lincoln's 272 words delivered at Gettysburg? Because Lincoln's address was that magisterial and Wills' scholarship that magnificent. Wills, 84 at this writing and Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University, wrote Lincoln At Gettysburg in 1992. While not dueling for oratory greatness, Lincoln's 272 words eclipse the famed oratory giant Edward Everett, the principal speaker at the dedication whose 13,000 words took two hours to deliver. Why? Wil...

This book is great. It's elegantly written, well-argued, well-documented and full of insight and information. Wills not only explains Lincoln's rhetorical techniques, he situates them in the context of classical rhetoric (in particular the ancient Greek funeral-for-heroes speech), American cultural trends of the mid 1800's (in particular Transcendentalism and the "rural cemetery" movement), and Lincoln's own history as a writer and giver of speeches. Most importantly, he demonstrates how Lincoln...

Wills takes us back not only to the day that Lincoln gave this speech, but also he starts off crafting deftly, and laboriously, our experiences while visiting a cemetery such as this one. That realm between the living and the dead should be used to remember and commemorate those that have fallen so that we can finish the work before us. Our work to reinvent the Union should be founded upon giving new meaning to "all men are created equal."Also, Wills explains how revolutionary Lincoln's Gettysbu...

This was a very scholarly Pulitzer Prize winning book about Lincoln and the greatest speech in our nation’s history. I memorized this speech in school but this author gives understanding to this short speech. In this book, the author examines the speech in minute and exacting detail. He analyzes Lincoln’s influences from the Transcendentalist of Emerson and the Greek oratory of Pericles. And he examines the place, the Gettysburg cemetery where the speech took place. With this speech, Lincoln su

This is quite some time to spend on such a short text, but the author really makes it come alive. In particular, I learned from the author as he connected this speech to Greek oratory which ennobled specific events and people by connecting them to the larger identity of the body politic, and I learned from the author's knowledge of Lincoln's contemporary hearers. The strength of Romanticism in the 19th century, I learned, contributed to what Garry wills called a "culture of death" which connecte...

There's a lot of junk by Gary Wills that I don't like, but I enjoyed this book enormously. Even more useful than Wills' gripping discussions of Lincoln's address, is the inclusion (in the appendices) of texts by Edward Everett, Gorgias, and Thucydides.

Calling all lovers of hermeneutica, oration, and linguistics---This book is for you!This is a phenomenal book, but its target audience is very small. You have to either be a Civil War fanatic, Lincoln fanatic, or interested in how great speeches are composed.This book is literally about the 272 words (or so) that Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg.Wills dissects the speech in every way imaginable. He parses every phrase. He covers the rhythmic patterns. He provides the historical context. He provides t...

The book "Lincoln at Gettysburg: Words That Remade America" by Garry Willis was a tough read for me. It took me nearly two-and-a-half weeks to read, and for most of the time, I didn’t understand what I was reading. When I did, however, I found the book extremely insightful, interesting, and thought-provoking. To start, this book gives an in depth explanation on the relationship between the Greek oratory (speaking and writing) and Lincoln’s Address. The most inducing part of these chapters was wh...

This is the best book I've read all year. I've been to Gettysburg six times so I don't know how I missed this Pulitzer Prize-winning book. In a detailed analysis, Wills (a trained classisist) sets up the context of Lincoln's most famous speech , the Gettysburg Address and then analyzes it, showing how Lincoln borrowed from the Ancient Greek funeral orations. The analysis is smart and detailed: showing the speakers (Clay, Webster, Calhoun) who influenced Lincoln's thoughts,along with the writers

I'm surprised at how little I liked this book. Honestly, I don't know how this won the Pulitzer; it's about a fifth very technical dissection of the Gettysburg Address itself, and the rest is a wandering hodgepodge (I found myself flipping page after page of information about then-contemporary cemetery design philosophy). Some of this is interesting - the author's rundown of the two hour long preceding Gettysburg Oration went into a lot of detail about public speaking in the mid 1800s that was s...

Incredibly exciting book, not just for anyone who loves American history, but for anyone who is interested in the challenge of writing well. What Gary Wills does is not just to analyze the Gettysburg Address, which is less than five hundred words long. He provides an intellectual profile of Lincoln. He analyzes the way Lincoln learned to structure his ideas on freedom, slavery, and the nature of American democracy, and he provides fascinating line by line break-downs so you can really see Lincol...

This is another book that I have come across that I thought I had left a review for. this book the author takes a look at Lincoln speaking at Gettysburg. What he was wanting to get across to the people there that day. what I found interesting is that the man who spoke before Lincoln did so for two hours people were restless tired then getting ready for the President and his words. most did not even understand there meaning until much later when his speech was published in newspapers throughout t...

Okay, no one throw rocks at me yet. I picked up this book with high, high hopes. After all, I think it even won a pulitzer prize. The prologue was well-written and interesting, and then... it sunk. I started reading the first chapter and was bored to tears. A whole chapter on the breakdown of the ancient Greek style of speaking? I skimmed over to chapter 2 and didn't make it through that one either. So now it's lying neglected somewhere in our apartment. If I have dismissed this book way too soo...

This shows why the Gettysburg Address is considered one of the greatest speeches of all time. It wasn't just the human tragedy of casualties at Gettysburg--many catastrophes have parallelled the loss of life. It wasn't just what Lincoln said. Author Wills explains Lincoln's key silences. He didn't mention Gettysburg or slavery or emancipation. President Lincoln provided common ground for the opposition to come together, a test of leadership we all should understand. The book gives us history as

Wills paints a sharp, clear-eyed portrait of Lincoln from an angle and in a setting I had never seen before - Lincoln's love of words and his skill at using them brought to the fore front. A lot of demythification here. The address emerges as almost perfectly constructed for its purpose.

It's a great scholarly essay, but too esoteric for a casual read.

Excellent. This book gives so much life to the Gettysburg Address by elevating it with its historical context. It touches on everything you could want to know about Greek oratorical patterns, Transcendentalist intellectual history, and political interpretations of the Declaration of Independence, making each relevant to Lincoln’s famous speech.

A President who was erudite, thoughtful ... who knew the power of his words.

Lincoln did not give the keynote address at Gettysburg; that was done by Edward Everett. It lasted two hours and is described in this book as masterpiece of its type, given at the last possible moment it could be appreciated, because shortly thereafter Lincoln's few hundred words had rendered that style of oration outdated.Wills covers what we know about the ceremony and the composition of the address, how the content fit into Lincoln's thought, and the style of Lincoln's speech. The stylistic e...

Lincoln and Gettysburg have been inextricably interlinked ever since November 19, 1863 -- the day that Abraham Lincoln delivered his dedication address for the newly completed National Cemetery at Gettysburg. Four months had passed since the tremendous battle of July 1-3 had turned the tide of civil war permanently in the Union's favor, albeit at an exceedingly high cost -- 46,000 casualties, including almost 8,000 soldiers killed. It is now a matter of record that President Lincoln's Gettysburg...

Wills evokes the stink of the corpses, some barely covered at the time of this historic dedication:A nurse shuddered at the all-too-visible "rise and swell of human bodies" in these furrows war had plowed.... Householders had to plant around the bodies in their fields and gardens, or brace themselves to move the rotting corpses to another place. Soon these uneasy graves were being rifled by relatives looking for their dead -- reburying other bodies that they turned up, even more hastily (and les...