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Audacious Abe

Allen C. Guelzo

The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedomby h. w. brandsdoubleday, 464 pages, $30 r The Problem with Lincolnby thomas j. dilorenzoregnery...

The Real Sherman

Allen C. Guelzo

The Scourge of War:The Life of William Tecumseh Shermanby brian holden reid oxford, 640 pages, $34.95 If William Tecumseh Sherman is known for one thing, it is the scorching...

Lincoln Lost, Douglas Won

Allen C. Guelzo

Everyone on that hot, dusty August afternoon in 1858 in the square at Ottawa, Illinois, knew who one of the men on the platform was. That man was Stephen...

The Imperial Conductor

Allen C. Guelzo

Toscanini: Musician of Conscience by harvey sachsliveright, 944 pages, $39.95 When the first instruction manual for leaders of orchestras—Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister—appeared in 1739, it was a sign...

Nuanced Patriotism

Allen C. Guelzo

I love my country – I fear my government. I first saw that mantra as a bumper sticker in the Clinton nineties. It then began to sprout as billboards and...

Play American

Allen C. Guelzo

Just seventy years ago, a Fortune poll reported that 62 percent of Americans listened to classical music, 40 percent could identify Arturo Toscanini as an orchestral conductor, and nine...

Dissenter for the Absolute

Allen C. Guelzo

No American philosophy has as yet been produced,” complained Charles Sanders Peirce in 1866. “Since our country has become independent, Germany has produced the whole development of the Transcendental...

Lincoln and Justice for All

Allen C. Guelzo

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The Prudence of Abraham Lincoln

Allen C. Guelzo

Say the word prudence to the ancients, and you would have named a virtue. Say it to the faculties of American colleges in the nineteenth century, and you would...

Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography

Allen C. Guelzo

While describing the Rawlsian-liberal idea of “the unencumbered self” and “the procedural republic” in Democracy’s Discontents (1994), political theorist Michael Sandel highlighted two individuals who represent the pro and...

Reparations Then and Now

Allen C. Guelzo

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