BOOK REVIEW

The Gettysburg Address
Inscribed and Illustrated by Sam Fink
With an introduction by Gabor Boritt
Published by Welcome Books of New York
Cover price £20

ACWS has been sent this book to review by the Publishers UK Distributors, who say we can buy it from them direct at £18 per copy. It is a large book, A3 size, and it contains the text of the Gettysburg Address and the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. It takes each phrase of Gettysburg Address, and adds a large pen-and-ink drawn, coloured illustration, per A3 page. These illustrations are largely cartoons of Abraham Lincoln, and other imagery of the words and phrases.

For example, the page that has on it the words in very large print (!) - 'that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom' contains a picture of President Lincoln, about 1 foot high, dressed in a very vivid green suit, scattering seeds on the ground out of a satchel bearing the legend 'seeds of freedom'.

On the other side of each page is a quotation either from Lincoln or about him e.g. 'now he belongs to the ages' Edwin Stanton, or part of an address to his cabinet by President Lincoln about his determination to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation.

At the back of the book there is a two page chronology of significant events in the USA from 1774 to 1865, concentrating of course on the American Civil War.

To me, Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address is a masterpiece of political thought and of succinct delivery. It seems to me a great pity that it has been broken up into a few words and phrases per page, and has had added to it some gaudy illustrations. What is the purpose of this book we must ask ourselves? Is it gaudy Smoltz, destined for the coffee tables of Middle America, or is it a children's book, designed to teach United States juniors and infants part of their history? If the latter, then it should have been published without the pictures being coloured in, so that the children could at least use it as a colouring book.

The whole text of this speech is always worth reading, but the only time in this publication that it is put together in a readable logical form, is when it has been written on a drawing of a Bell (which is not very easy). As the frontis piece says 'here, illustrated and inscribed, are the words spoken by President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg Pennsylvania on the 19th November 1863. They ring as true today as they did then. Now they tell us where we've been, who we are and what we should strive to be'. Indeed. It is a pity that this book fails to achieve that high ambition.

Philip Clark 19th Indiana

The above article first appeared in the ACWS Newsletter, Spring 2008