“This double sectionalism and these standards of elegance are fatal to the usefulness of a book which does not pretend to a ‘vast amount of research into sources not before used,’ and which presents few new ideas. Nor is the execution faultless.” Carl Russell Fish.
| + — — | Am. Hist. R. 10: 901. Jl. ‘05. 630w. | |
| + | Critic. 46: 188. F. ‘05. 30w. |
“The author has produced a well-balanced, readable, compact book, that gives the important facts of Lincoln’s life. He has brought to his work historical training and a practised hand.”
| + + + | Dial. 38: 95. F. 1, ‘05. 230w. |
“Dr. Oberholtzer writes clearly and forcibly for the most part, but with an occasional verbal arrangement that makes his meaning hard to understand. The ‘Bibliography’ of this volume is remarkable for its inadequacy. Dr. Oberholtzer’s predilection is for such memoirs as serve the more sordid and vulgarizing conception of Lincoln’s character.”
| — — + | Nation. 80: 17. Ja. 5, ‘05. 1090w. |
“No man, whichever his side of the fence can fail to find much pleasure and satisfaction in contemplating Mr. Lincoln in the angle of view in which Mr. Oberholtzer has chosen to look at him. The author manages as a rule to be astonishingly fair to both sides and to get, in most cases, very close to the truth. There are lapses of course. Times, too, when in his eagerness to make bold generalizations the author misses things he should have considered.”
| + + — | N. Y. Times. 10: 36. Ja. 21, ‘05. 640w. |
[*] O’Brien, William. Recollections. [**]$3.50. Macmillan.
“William O’Brien, the energetic Irish member of the British Parliament ... reveals a most interesting and complex personality in this work. Many of this vigorous fighter’s recollections concern the fierce, endless warfare over Ireland’s rights and wrongs. But he was a poet in his youth. He has strong sympathies with the Gaelic revival, he was an ardent theatregoer in his young manhood, and is still, it seems, in the intervals when the Irish contingent in the House of Commons is not active, a dreamer of brave dreams.”—N. Y. Times.