Brown Baggers book club met on Thursday, January 18 at noon to discuss And There Was Light by Jon Meacham. Our readers braved the 720-page tome, then braved very cold and dreary weather to meet. Everyone was impressed by the moving, engaging, and well-researched writing. Meacham has written numerous presidential biographies that have earned him accolades, awards, and honors.
This biography not only provided a nuanced look at Lincoln, but also his contemporaries; and not only people, but also places. With this presentation, no one, and no place, was simply “good” or “bad.” In fact, Meacham makes a point to highlight Lincoln’s struggles, imperfections, fallacies, and failures.
Published in 2022, we couldn’t ignore the parallels between the history Meacham presented and the present political reality. While it has been over 150 years since the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, Lincoln’s confrontation with money, race, identity, and faith contains plenty of parallels with today’s polarization. Lincoln is considered one of our greatest presidents, but at the time, he was an incredibly divisive leader, who was both beloved and despised. There is a lot we can learn from Lincoln, studying him as a president and as a leader. Will we take hold of the lessons?
In addition to being a political, presidential biography, this is also a life story. We were touched by Meacham’s presentation of Lincoln’s grim childhood and his tendency to fall into depression; we felt incredible empathy for Mary Todd Lincoln’s feelings of being an outsider, and we were moved to tears by the Bixby Letter written by Lincoln – a short but powerful portrayal of the religious influences on Lincoln and his presidency. Meacham, an Episcopalian and the Canon Historian of Washington National Cathedral, takes the time to look at Lincoln through the lens of religion and spirituality; Lincoln read voraciously, mostly the Bible. Meacham also closely examined other books we know Lincoln read as he came of age, and we are able to see the allusions to those books crop up in some of Lincoln’s most famous speeches. Our readers were interested to learn about how Lincoln was influenced by Euclid’s principles regarding thinking and reasoning logically.
If you’re unsure about And There Was Light, you may feel reassured knowing that almost half of that intimidating page count is accounted for with notes and bibliographic material. In the end, the narrative is more like 400 pages, and many say it is one of the most readable biographies of Lincoln available today. It was once reported that there are more books written about Lincoln than anyone but Jesus. You may have already read a book or two about our sixteenth president, but this new presentation of Lincoln’s values – some say even his very soul – may be worth exploring.
Other books to explore:
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Other materials to explore:
Assassins (musical)