{"id":3873,"date":"2025-05-05T10:45:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T16:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=3873"},"modified":"2025-05-05T10:47:32","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T16:47:32","slug":"our-ancient-faith-lincoln-democracy-and-the-american-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=3873","title":{"rendered":"Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>by Allen Guelzo, 2024, Audiobook narrated by Justin Price <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-4-5.gif\" alt=\"4.5 stars\"\/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let me first say that I am a big fan of Allen Guelzo. He has an astounding grasp of historical facts and concepts. I viewed his online Great Courses course, <em>Our Founding Fathers<\/em>, and learned so much about the writing of our constitution. I then decided to read this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book begins with an overview of the concepts of democracy in the United States. He then outlines Lincoln&#8217;s views on democracy, but then he also describes his views on slavery, religion, and race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, I think the book is very balanced. The author describes Lincoln&#8217;s qualities as well as his failings using many quotations from individuals who knew and dealt with Lincoln. Guelzo also explores the lasting impacts of Lincoln&#8217;s views, policies, and accomplishments and speculates somewhat on what would have happened if Lincoln had not been assassinated and completed his second term as president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was hoping that the author, Allen Guelzo, would also be the narrator as his presentation in the online course was so good. That didn&#8217;t turn out to be the case, but Justin Price did an outstanding job. He seemed to capture the import and mood of the text very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the book may not appeal to a reader who doesn&#8217;t have a deep interest in history, I enjoyed it, and it gave me some different perspectives on Lincoln and the times he lived in. I would have rated it even higher, but reading history has a tendency to be dry and, no matter how well done, it doesn&#8217;t compare to the excitement of reading a good crime novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Allen Guelzo, 2024, Audiobook narrated by Justin Price Let me first say that I am a big fan of Allen Guelzo. He has an astounding grasp of historical facts and concepts. I viewed his online Great Courses course, Our <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=3873\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[20,16],"class_list":["post-3873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-four-star","tag-history","tag-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3873"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3876,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions\/3876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}