Lincolniana; Or, The Humors of Uncle Abe

In the midst of a nation tearing itself apart, Abraham Lincoln was still telling jokes. This 1864 collection gathers the stories, quips, and tall tales that made Lincoln legendarily funny during the Civil War years. The "Uncle Abe" of these pages is no marble monument. He's a backwoods storyteller with a talent for making generals squirm, diplomats stutter, and even himself the butt of his own jokes. Here you'll find Lincoln reducing cabinet meetings to laughter, outwitting sharp-tongued rivals with a single perfectly-timed line, and using humor as both shield and sword during the bloodiest years in American history. These aren't sanitized anecdotes. They're the ribald, surprisingly cutting jokes that Lincoln's contemporaries actually told about him - the humor of a man who understood that surviving the impossible sometimes requires nothing more than a well-timed laugh.