In the preface to his "Life of Lincoln", William Herndon expounded that when writing the history of Lincoln's early life "the whole truth concerning him should be known" and there should be "nothing colored or suppressed." Having set the standard Herndon failed to follow it, for there were something's even Herndon must have felt should not be put into print. Scholars wishing to explore Lincoln's early life beyond the insights offered by Herndon's biography had to turn to examining the letters and notes collected for over a twenty year period by himself and his collaborator Jesse Weik. This often proved to be a daunting task. As the editor's in their introduction noted even though available on Micro roll film specific documents are "very hard to locate" and even if located are "very hard to read." To further complicate matters the index to the Herndon collection prepared by the Library of Congress is "neither accurate nor complete." What Editors Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis have done in their "Herndon's Informants" is to transcribe all of the known Herndon, Weik letters and notes into a readable and properly indexed Documentary Edition. What they have also done is create a masterpiece of scholarship that will be used by students of Lincoln for decades to come. "Herndon's Informants" offers the student the complete Herndon collection, unabridged and un-editorialized. To anyone who has a strong interest in learning more about Lincoln's early life this is just about all that is available and it simply must become a part of your personal library.

Having been a serrious engraver for just over a year now, I have amassed several books on engraving: mainly the "standards" for engravers: several of the Dover series of patterns, James L. Meek, Nimschke, etc. This has some of the finest and sharpest photos of engraving I have seen. And this book is cheap compaired to many of the others. Just plain beautiful. And --- worth every penny

The Grand Review is not only about the climatic end of the Civil War, but rather the beginning of modern America. For students of Civil War history, this book provides rare insights into an event that is still part of America. The writing that describes the two-day parade marking the end of the war is griping in its detail. And the authors forcefully make the point that although the fighting has long since ended, many of the forces that led to war remain with us. A compelling read for any person interested in American history.

Published as part of the *Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series*, *Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book* is the definitive edition of a collection of about four hundred quotations Jefferson gathered from his more literary readings during his student years. It represents, according to the editor, «one of the few surviving documents from Jefferson's formative years» and reveals a transitional, private facet of a man most of us know through his mature, public years.

«Commonplacing » seems to have been one of the practices of the readers of Jefferson's time: it consisted in copying the most eloquent or profound passages one encountered in one's readings into a notebook one would presumably read over and over again. If I remember correctly, John Locke also commonplaced, and Jefferson himself left us more specialized notebooks, such as the legal ones he produced in the mid 1760s.

Most of the quotes in the present volume are from works of «imaginative literature»- mostly poems Jefferson enjoyed in his youth, from Homer to another favorite of his, «Ossian», whom he believed to be a genuine third-century Celtic bard but who was in fact a fabrication of his eighteenth-century «translator», James McPherson. Most of the quotes are in English, but a substantial number of them are in foreign languages Jefferson was fluent in: ancient Greek, latin and French, all of them translated in the footnotes. Two criteria seem to have presided to their inclusion: their felicity of expression and very often the little gems of wisdom they contain - on the law of identity: «If white, & black, blend, soften & Unite/ A thousand Ways ; is there no black or White ?» ; on the virtue of productivity: «without employ/ the soul is on a rack ; the rack of rest» ; or on objective reasoning: «He who has judged aught, with the other side unheard, may have judged righteously, but was himself unrighteous.»

Perhaps more interesting to the historian of ideas, this literary commonplace book also contains thirty pages of extracts from Bolingbroke's essays and letters, which almost singlehandedly shaped Jefferson's religious outlook and help explain the «self-evident» standards Jefferson applied in his heretical selective rewriting of the Gospels. Bolinbgroke's crucial influence on Jefferson's philosophical outlook is stressed by the editor in the highly helpful thirty-two-page «Register of Authors» which follows the excerpts : «the major tenets of Bolingbroke's philosophical program were ultimately adopted by Jefferson as his own: a thoroughgoing materalism; a rejection of metaphysics and all speculation that ventures beyond the reach of human apprehension; an uncompromising commitment to reason as the final arbiter of knowledge and validity; a disposition to regard churchmen and theologians as the corrupters of Christianity; a distate for the doctrines of Plato and his influence on Christian teachings; and a strong skepticism regarding the historicity of biblical accounts. » (p156)

In addition to being a window on the young Jefferson's soul (or lack thereof), this volume is remarkable for the thorough and careful work of its editor (except for a grammatical error in a French quotation from Racine, in §395) and will be beautifully complemented by *Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels*, published in the same series.

The bad points first...

Being a Linoln buff myself, but certainly not a scholar on the subject, I found this book to be a worthwhile addition to my library but one that is seriously flawed. The first chapter goes into painstaking detail about Lincoln's wrestling match with Jack Armstrong in New Salem. I think a wrestling historian would find it more useful than someone interested in our 16th president. Endless second and third-hand accounts of the match are analyzed in detail. And for what? No reliable conclusions can be drawn from these contradictory accounts. The first chapter could have been summarized in two words...who knows? And I'm not really sure who cares either. I found this chapter to be a bit bizarre.

My other criticism of the book is that it is very poorly organized, in my opinion. In fact, only the first chapter sticks to the topic of it's title. The rest of the book seems to be organized into chapters only for the purpose of giving the reader a needed break from the tedium. Sure, you will find something about Lincoln's relationship with women in the chapter entitled, "Women," but you will find just as much about this subject in just about any other chapter. And you will learn about his politics in the chapter about women, etc. It almost seems as if Mr. Wilson just pinned a title to the top of a page now and then without regard to what followed. This lack of structure also results in a great deal of repetition. The same quotes are repeated again and again and again which would not have been necessary if each chapter stuck with it's title subject. One hopes that this lack of organization is not a reflection of Mr. Wilson's research skills.

On the plus side, if you can wade through the book, which is tedious to the extreme at times, you may end up with a more textured view of Lincoln the man. The book can help one to fill in the blanks of Lincoln's life but it is almost entirely based on educated guesses and conclusions on Mr. Wilson's part. In a sense, the book is reminiscent of Gore Vidal's Lincoln. But such conjecture can be useful, of course if we are searching for that "ring of truth" to fill in the blanks.

All in all, I consider this to be a useful addition to my fairly extensive Lincoln library but I certainly would not recommend it as a first book about Lincoln by any means and I think Mr. Wilson would agree with that assessment. The author writes that the book is not intended for scholars, but I find it difficult to see why the person with a more casual interest in Lincoln would be interested in these endless details which really never reach a conclusion. The book is, however, instructive as to how incorrect information is passed on and accepted as fact by generations of historians.

This book asks more questions than it answers but, ironically, the overall result is a much better picture of Lincoln. I would recommend this book only to the serious Lincoln student.

Wilson opens "Honor's Voice" with an overly long introduction to his methodology, which, in brief, is to sort through all the bits and tales and legends about Abraham Lincoln from age 22 to 33, and weighing the stories for credibility and accuracy, reach the truest picture of the young man. Because there is no shortage of material, Wilson has focused on ten themes, including how he educated himself, how he entered politics, his relations with women, and particularly with Mary Todd, etc.

The problem is that it's not clear for whom Wilson is writing. Wilson himself declares that the book is not for academics, but who else would be interested in a work that is less about Lincoln than about stories about Lincoln? Few of the legion Lincoln fans, save scholars, would have the interest or the patience for a tedious historiography and word-by-word analysis of obscure letters and notes about the life of their subject. For example, the first chapter examines a wrestling match Lincoln had at age 22, and fully describes the match and its significance in three interesting pages. The problem is the chapter goes of for 33 pages, citing dozens of sources, including eyewitnesses as well as later biographers, analyzes differences in their accounts of the match, and weighs them against each other for credibility. This approach may be a useful "how to" for amateur historians, but most readers would likely prefer more history and less methodology.

Fortunately, the first chapter is the toughest sledding. The subsequent ones follow the same pattern, but are far more readable, relying less on Wilson's interior dialogues on reliability and veracity. Lincoln's character slowly and arduously emerges, and Lincoln fans with the patience to wade through will find loads of interesting detail, such as on his surveying and early political careers. Wilson also excerpts snatches of Lincoln's favorite poems (Burns, Byron, etc.) to excellent effect in demonstrating both source and reflection of Lincoln's state of mind. The speculation on his melancholy and on his tragic romance with Ann Rutledge are well worthwhile, if a bit tedious.

The book is a good one, but could be much better. Perhaps Wilson will follow up with a book of half the length giving a detailed and straightforward history of this fascinating period in Lincoln's life based on the conclusions from this work, but omitting the tedium and repetition

Teachers in criminal justice classes, I am told, often stage mock crimes in their classrooms. In the middle of a lecture, for example, a bandit will barge in, threaten the students, and make off with the professor's wallet. The students, at first shocked but then relieved when told that it was a staged event, are then asked to describe the event. What did the suspect look like? How tall was he? What color hair did he have? What was he wearing? What did he say? Invariably, there are multiple answers to those questions. People saw different things. No one version of what occurred is totally accurate.

Wilson's book confronts that perennial problem of human perception. Though his 'transformation of Lincoln' plows familiar ground - how one solitary, unschooled backwoods man transformed himself into a national, albeit polarizing figure, through willpower, endurance, ambition, guts, and brains - his careful forensic method, as judge and jury of a multitude of competing facts and interpretations, makes this book a compelling tale, as much about how history is written as it is about how Lincoln evolved.

And this is why I disagree with the reviews that describe this book as long-winded, tough-sledding and over-detailed. In Honor's Voice, Wilson provides a valuable glimpse into the historian's bag of tricks. Wilson takes each of the iconic moments of Lincoln's life - his storied wresting match with Jack Armstrong, his self-education, his disastrous romance with Ann Rutledge - and peels apart the layers, examining the historical record as closely as possible, evaluating the claims of eyewitnesses and second-hand sources, and holding each up to scrutiny before making any assertions; and even then, he is admirably cautious. Wilson presents a lot of quotes, exactly as written, from contemporaries who witnessed, or claimed to have witnessed, crucial events in Lincoln's life, and asks: Is this the truth? Who could have benefit from enhancing the truth? Who was really there? What about the quote lends it authenticity, or falsity? Yes, the narrative covers the same event numerous times, but this is the price one pays of exactness. Like the criminal justice students who have competing recollections of a recent event, not one of Lincoln's contemporaries knows the whole truth. But taken together, one gets a more clear picture of what might have happened.

The risk, of course, is boredom and the frustration of dealing with multiple sources of the same event; but the reward is a new appreciation of Lincoln the man, as well as the historian's challenge of teasing out the facts in an era long since vanished.