The writings on Abraham Lincoln are almost too considerable to calculate, thus testifying to his endurance as historical personage, iconic hero and the source of curiosity for endless researchers. But with the bicentennial of his birth upon us, a wealth of recent publications retrace his life and legacy, hoping to shed new—or merely refocused—light on all that is already known about the man.

Ronald C. White Jr.’s A. Lincoln: A Biography is an imposing doorstopper of a book, close to a thousand pages and exhaustively annotated and referenced. As near as any interested reader might determine, White has left absolutely no stone unturned, from an account of forebear Samuel Lincoln leaving England for the New World in 1637, to the family struggles in Kentucky and Indiana, to the young Abe’s adventurous younger years, to his rise as lawyer and politician in Illinois, and on through the Civil War and the grief of the nation upon his assassination in 1865.

White’s research benefits from the availability of the recently completed Lincoln Legal Papers—which offer a more thorough view of Lincoln’s law practice—and also the emergence of newly discovered letters and photos. Besides a sense of Lincoln’s integrity—something pretty much easily assumed by most anyway—it is perhaps the man’s smartly practical spirit that emerges through this stout tome, in particular as relates to the great political issues before him (e.g., slavery) and the difficult task of guiding his armies and a nation through a horrific war, which tested every aspect of daily life and constantly demanded a nurturant sense of its absolute necessity. Finally, Lincoln rises up in this volume as a patriot of the ultimate rank, one with a determined eye on the prize: Union.

Presidential brief
Abraham Lincoln is an entry in the highly regarded American Presidents series, originally under the editorship of the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. These volumes are usually authored by distinguished journalists or historians, and, once in a while, by noted politicos, in this case former South Dakota senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George S. McGovern. McGovern capably sticks to the series formula, which involves a more general overview of the subject’s life and career, along with a development of the key themes that shaped his most important actions. McGovern’s tone is laudatory throughout, as he offers insights into Lincoln’s attitudes on politics, the war and his most dearly held personal beliefs. Coverage is from hardscrabble Kentucky beginnings to the last moments at Ford’s Theatre. This is a fine read for those who want to know about Lincoln but may not have time for the more in-depth biographies.

Inside the Lincoln White House
Pulitzer Prize winner James M. McPherson’s Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief mines a topic that’s been touched upon previously in many other publications—Lincoln dealing with the command aspects of war. Yet the author offers an engrossing narrative that shows how Honest Abe grasped the reins of his new and heretofore untested presidential duties, while also examining his difficulties in dealing with a string of Army generals whose failings often proved vexatious. McPherson gives us a Lincoln who, after taking office, immersed himself in a crash course on military strategy, then steadfastly applied what he’d learned to the enormous task at hand. Leaving the micro-issues of campaigns and tactics to his military men, Lincoln nevertheless consistently prodded them with commonsensical admonishments on the value of stalking the enemy and striking hard when necessary. Flummoxed by the vain and overly cautious McClellan, the unprepared Burnside, the disappointing Hooker and the merely competent Meade, Lincoln finally found his fighter in Ulysses Grant. McPherson effectively mixes the political undercurrent of events with his deconstruction of Lincoln’s process in eventually achieving victory.

Daniel Mark Epstein’s Lincoln’s Men: The President and His Private Secretaries captures the lives of Lincoln’s secretaries—John Hay, John Nicolay and William Stoddard—each of whom claimed Illinois roots by virtue of residence, education or work. Nicolay had essentially run Lincoln’s 1860 presidential campaign, Stoddard had been a supportive Illinois newspaperman, and the youngest, Hay, came recommended as a young poet and fresh graduate of Brown University. Epstein mixes their accounts into one narrative, with the obvious bulk of the material focused on their time in the White House, where the trio basically comprised the whole of the president’s staff. Nicolay did the chief executive’s scheduling and Hay ran interference; this duo eventually went on to jointly publish a seminal Lincoln biography years later. Stoddard, originally hired as a patent officer at the Interior Department, juggled several jobs, including assisting the president with his speeches, but eventually dealing more with the affairs of Mrs. Lincoln. Hay ultimately established the biggest name for himself—he was secretary of state under McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt. This is a readable joint biography that connects its subjects to Lincoln with legitimacy.

His final act and legacy
Lincoln’s last year as president was certainly taken up in large part with the prosecution of the war, but, as Charles Bracelen Flood makes clear in 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History, the man was also dealing with intense extracurricular political matters. Somehow continuing to more or less efficiently battle the Confederate Army, Lincoln meanwhile dealt with the presence of French troops in Mexico, grousing cabinet members, myriad technical issues regarding the continued settling of the expanding American West and related railroad legislation, not to mention the onslaught of a stormy re-election campaign, which brought with it endless pressure from an often-hostile press and infighting within his own party about the terms of impending Reconstruction and the disposition of the freed-slave issue. Flood’s extensively sourced text tracks the official Lincoln in great detail, while also making sure the well-researched quoted excerpts provide insight into the president’s admirable character and manners and incredible strength under pressure.

The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now would make an astute gift for any Lincoln buff, but it’s a definite keeper for any home library as well. Editor Harold Holzer (whose Lincoln President-Elect was released last fall) gathers more than 100 works composed by writers, historians and politicians, from Lincoln’s time to the present day. The pieces represent all genres—essays, novels, plays, biographies, speeches, magazine articles, poetry and memoirs—and the topical coverage is essentially universal. That includes discussions on Lincoln’s fascination with language, the lost love of his life (Ann Rutledge), his historic debates with Stephen Douglas, his outlook on race and religion, his daily work regimen, and his politics and policies. Men and women of verse are here in force (Robert Lowell, Mark Van Doren, Stephen Vincent Benét, Marianne Moore, Carl Sandburg, etc.), and the general range of contributors throughout is all-encompassing (Emerson, Marx, Hawthorne, Stowe, Ibsen, Melville, Twain, Tolstoy, Wicker, Vidal, Safire, Doctorow et al.). Walt Whitman, perhaps Lincoln’s most ardent literary fan, weighs in with no fewer than nine separate contributions. Arrangement of the entries is chronological, but Lincoln diehards can pick this one up and start reading just about anywhere.

Thanks to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Brady believes in the “better angels of our nature.”

This season’s crop of new baseball books offers some revealing journalism that leads readers onto the sport’s less traveled basepaths. Meanwhile, notable bios in the lineup incorporate some of the game’s most compelling history into their pages.

Calling the shots
Bruce Weber’s As They See ’Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires  might be the most original piece of reportage on the baseball front in years. While so much of the baseball literature is invested in the achievements of the players, Weber goes another—and totally refreshing—route, getting the inside dope on the lives and careers of umpires. Seemingly taken for granted and tolerated as a necessary evil, umpires are a critical part of the game, yet the culture and economics of the profession, as Weber so keenly chronicles, are generally second-rate. While players routinely become millionaires, most umpires spend their lives in the minor leagues, with slim chances for advancement to the major leagues. They suffer years of unglamorous travel with no guarantee of financial payoff, all the while enduring verbal abuse from fans, players and managers, as well as the indifference of league executives who hire and fire them. The umpire’s life is a solitary one, and as part of his homework, Weber actually enrolls in a noted umpiring school, gains some hard-won expertise, and travels to Podunks across America watching his newfound brethren at work. Later, Weber pulls a Plimpton-like, fantasy-fulfillment stint as third-base ump at a major league exhibition game. Throughout, the author charts umpiring history, profiles some of the legendary practitioners, explains recent labor disputes and attempts to clarify some famous on-the-field incidents, whenever possible conducting firsthand interviews to get the stories behind the controversial calls. 


Major stories from the minor leagues
In a similar vein, Matt McCarthy’s Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit draws readers into the small-town world of baseball’s minor leagues, but comes at it from the POV of the struggling young player. In 2002, author McCarthy was a talented pitcher at Yale, good enough to enter the Anaheim Angels’ farm system. McCarthy winds up in a rookie league in Provo, Utah, surrounded by Mormons in the stands and, in the clubhouse, an eclectic collection of teammates, including coddled, high-priced bonus babies, blue-collar wannabes, colorful dudes with vague moral compasses and also Latin players who speak very little English. Heading up the team is veteran minor league manager Tom Kotchman, who emerges as a lovably eccentric baseball lifer on a par with some of the comical characters the world met in Jim Bouton’s classic Ball Four some 40 years ago. McCarthy only lasts the one season, then gets his walking papers for good at spring training 2003. McCarthy’s memoir was drawn from diary entries, and his recollections have been disputed by some the individuals he played with, but the entries are absorbing, including his encounters with a fair number of players who have since made the grade at the major league level.

Life lessons
Straw: Finding My Way, co-authored with John Strausbaugh, tells the life story of former outfielder Darryl Strawberry, who, after excellent years with the Mets in the 1980s—including a World Series championship in 1986—eventually had to confront many demons. Son of an abusive alcoholic father, Strawberry traversed some very dark personal roads—drugs (all kinds), sex, paternity suits, chaotic marriages, run-ins with police—then watched physical injury take a toll on his baseball career. He attempted comebacks, and even had success in the ’90s with the Yankees, but not before he was stricken with colon cancer, which he has battled courageously. This book functions rather as Strawberry’s attempt to make his peace with friends, relatives and God, while working his way to a cathartically gained perspective on both his failures and his commitment to a more responsible life.

Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee is a biography of another kind: that of a beloved baseball legend who conducted himself in exemplary fashion both on and off the field. Born into a modest Italian-American immigrant home in St. Louis in 1925, Berra showed promise early on but World War II interrupted his minor-league career. Serving in the Navy—and seeing duty at the Normandy landings on D-Day—Berra eventually joined the New York Yankees in 1946 and began a spectacular Hall of Fame career as a catcher and outfielder. Journalist Allen Barra’s book is the first full-bodied accounting of Berra’s life, and, along the way, he essentially tells the story of the great Yankee teams of the 1950s and ’60s. He also covers Yogi’s managerial stints (which met with mixed results) and opines on his subject’s famous penchant for originating colorful aphorisms. Many archival photos cover every area of Yogi’s life.

An overlooked legend
Michael D’Antonio’s Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O’Malley, Baseball’s Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles is a well-researched book that covers the life of the late owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and also recalls the pivotal events that led to his moving the team from Brooklyn to the West Coast in 1957. O’Malley is a key historical baseball figure, but heretofore not much has been known about him by the general reading public. A lawyer involved originally in the Dodgers’ finances, he took controlling ownership of the franchise in 1950, fielding some great teams, including the 1955 squad that defeated the Yankees in the World Series. O’Malley was vilified by Brooklynites with the move to Los Angeles, but D’Antonio’s account implies that O’Malley’s apparently sincere attempts to keep the team in Flatbush were thwarted by competing commercial interests and stodgy city officials, which eventually forced him to seek greener pastures for “Dem Bums.” D’Antonio writes consistently well, and his book fills an important gap in baseball history.

Martin Brady blogs about sports at Sports Media America.

The star names shine particularly bright on the bookshelves this holiday season. Where to begin? How about age before beauty . . .

The good ol’ boys
The life, times and works of an iconoclast filmmaker are examined in Robert Altman: The Oral Biography. Author Mitchell Zuckoff rounded up family members (including exes), associates and countless actors who assess the director known for ensemble casts, overlapping sound, a dense and naturalistic style and disdain for the Hollywood system. To Altman, the great films were inexplicable; a moviegoer might not be able to recount the plot, but they knew they’d experienced something. Little wonder Altman’s Nashville is so revered.

A former documentary filmmaker (see 1957’s compelling The James Dean Story) who directed episodic TV in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Altman became a counterculture force with the 1970 film M*A*S*H. (He had nothing to do with the TV series, which he hated.) Critical successes followed, as did flops. But the rollercoaster career was never boring. Neither was the hard-living Altman, who died in 2006 at the age of 81. As confounding as his films, he was alternately gregarious, self-absorbed and bitter. He demanded loyalty from the troops; sensing otherwise, he held a grudge. “His eyes were fantastic instruments of reprimand and reproach,” recalled composer John Williams. But as careers go, Altman gave it his all, and he did it the hard way—by remaining true to himself.

Another famous maverick is the subject of the unauthorized American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood. But this is no “gotcha” tome; author Marc Eliot is reverential as he links Eastwood’s personal life with his professional choices. Based largely on previously published works, the book moves along quickly, fueled by Eliot’s astute knowledge of the Eastwood filmography, including the performer’s three essential screen personae: The Man With No Name (the spaghetti Westerns); nihilistic “Dirty” Harry Callahan; and the good-natured redneck. All “are viscerally connected to the real-life Clint,” Eliot argues. Eastwood’s Army days were a conduit to Hollywood—and beyond. As a base lifeguard and projectionist, he met young actors like David Janssen and Martin Milner, who served in the Special Services. (Like Janssen and Milner, Eastwood became a contract player at Universal.) Being stationed at Fort Ord allowed him to explore the fabulous Northern California coastline—and the quaint city of Carmel, where he would ultimately become mayor.
Like the men he has portrayed, Eastwood goes his own way, and is not to be crossed. Though he had a long first marriage, he was never the faithful type. Over the years and under the radar, he fathered four illegitimate children, in addition to two with his first wife and one with the current Mrs. Eastwood (who is much younger than Eastwood’s 79 years). A palimony suit involving his former lover, actress Sondra Locke, put his unorthodox personal life in the spotlight. But his cinematic artistry on the big screen has remained unspoiled over the years—a testament to hard work, resourcefulness and a deft understanding of moviegoer’s tastes. As for Eastwood’s special allure, the Italian director Sergio Leone once said, “It seemed to me Clint closely resembled a cat.” He’s moved like one, too—pouncing to the top of the Hollywood fence.

Glamour girls
Though Liz Taylor long ago lost her perch as a leading lady, her name continues to evoke fame like few others. William J. Mann dissects the crafty machinations of her stardom in the biographical How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood. The author, who last wrote about Katharine Hepburn, interviewed Taylor sources and exhaustively examined the publicity that has accompanied the life and career of a woman who once casually observed that she couldn’t recall when she wasn’t famous. Mann concentrates on what he calls the “chocolate sundae” years—those of the great films and great romances. That period encompasses her carefully staged illnesses and botched suicide attempt, the Liz-Eddie-Debbie drama, the scandalous Liz-Dick Cleopatra hookup, her friendships with gay icons Monty Clift and Rock Hudson . . . which all played out publicly, with Liz working the media. Say what you will about her, the woman knew how to be a star.

Grace Kelly knew how to evoke style, class and an on-screen cool. Celebrity biographer Donald Spoto met her in her incarnation as Princess Grace of Monaco, while writing one of his many books on Alfred Hitchcock, director of three films in which she starred. At her request, he waited 25 years after her death to write High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly, a respectful take on a woman whose impassive calm hid great passion (there were many lovers) and whose serenity masked her melancholy.

Another screen icon is profiled in Doris Day: The Illustrated Biography, by frequent BBC broadcaster and prolific celebrity biographer Michael Freedland.The book hits the career highlights and personal benchmarks of a complex woman whose life is at odds with her sunny image. First published in the U.K. in 2000, the book doesn’t include recent events in Day’s life, such as the death in 2004 of her only son, record producer Terry Melcher. But the slender volume succeeds as a stocking stuffer-sized introduction to the vivacious actress-singer-animal rights activist.

All about Paul
Ending on a musical note, Paul McCartney: A Life, is a page-turner that depicts McCartney as an ambitious, intuitive musical innovator, ever in competition with the rougher-edged John Lennon. Peter Ames Carlin, author of an acclaimed bio of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, is a journalist-fan who’s dug deep and written authoritatively. It’s all here: the genesis of the Beatles; McCartney’s relationship with the sophisticated and cultured Jane Asher—and her family (with whom he lived); his romances and marriages; the contractual battles with John and Yoko. And of course, there’s the music, with Carlin arguing that it was the “cute” Beatle who was the real force behind the Fab Four. Be prepared to be convinced.

Author-journalist Pat H. Broeske has written about Hollywood for publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Entertainment Weekly.