Take Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography Composed By Jean H. Baker Expressed As E-Text

Mary Lincoln was a bit petty and she probably shouldn't have been spending as much money as she did during the Civil War, but when you are a well educated woman who likes to speak her mind and it's thes, you're going to stick out a bit.
At first, I thought this biography had too much needless detail, especially about Mary's family, but the more I read the more I enjoyed it, Mary really did try hard but she was way before her time in terms of education and wanting to speak her mind, I felt like that the sadder she was due to her awful stepmother, the deaths of her sons, and the murder of her husband, the more she seemed to want to spend money.
I can't believe her one remaining son had her committed because she believed in spiritualism and because she obsessively spent money to try and cover the deep grief she felt.
What a horrible son. Good book. Lots of interesting detail that I didn't know, Hang in there thru the firstpages and you will appreciate the indepth detail when you are done the book, A magisterial biography of ourth First Lady and wife of ourth President, Mary Todd Lincoln was ath Century first lady in theth, That is, she had a sharp political antenna, enjoyed being involved in politics an unheard of avocation for the time and advised her husband, both prior to and during his presidency.
She also partook in the very modern activity of taking names and having a long memory, Displaying a "passion for sorrow and anger," Mrs, Lincoln led a tragic life two sons died prematurely her husband, of course, was assassinated she was bitterly estranged from her surviving son, Robert, He conspired to have her committed, Yet through it all, Mary Todd Lincoln retained a vivacious, materialistic selfpity and dared tread where other female angels term used loosely here feared to, Dr. Baker's biography is finely and minutely detailed much like the high fashion Mrs, Lincoln so relished as well as persuasively and entertainingly written, However controversial, Mary Todd Lincoln formed the template for the modern first lady political astuteness, eye on fashion, etc, Her by turns astounding and appalling life make for a compelling and informative bio, My problems with this book are legion, but I'll highlight just a few,

First, Baker's perspective is limited, as she clearly is writing a "feminist" history of Mary Todd Lincoln, and her diatribes become both tiresome and tortured.
Her "logic" goes like this:th century society treated women badly because they were women, Mary Todd Lincoln lived in theth century, She was treated badly. Therefore, she was treated badly because she was a woman, That thinking is far too simplistic, but it is at the foundation of all of Baker's analysis,

Second, Baker's analysis of facts and records is simplistic and, sometimes, just silly, She reads a lot into small comments in letters or statements, and without any other support, At times, frankly, it seems like she is just making stuff up, For example, she really wants to portray Mary Todd Lincoln as a modern, "sensual" woman, but in order to do so, she resorts to a Beavis and Butthead approach of trying to find something sexual in otherwise tame letters.
The worst of it is when she writes about what Mary Todd Lincoln "would have said" in her insanity trial, had she been given the opportunity, Baker's defenses of Lincoln's eccentric behavior is so simplistic as to be laughable, For example, her defense of Lincoln buying multiple sets of curtains for a window she didn't have is essentially this: It was her money, she can do what she wants.


I get more insight talking to my teenagers,

Third, the book is just boring, The only thing that makes Mary Todd Lincoln interesting is that she allegedly went nuts after the murder of her husband, But that subject actually receives very brief treatment in this book, which instead bores us to tears with details about her childhood and young adulthood, There is a reason this book got relegated to the bathroom pretty eardly on in my reading of it: More thanminutes reading it was torture, I read this for one of my reading groups, I was looking forward to reading it but it is written in a scholarly tone, which made it difficult to get through evenpages in a day.


I did learn more than I knew before about Abraham Lincoln's wife but my attachment to this much maligned First Lady was born when I read the historical novel Love Is Eternal by Irving Stone, thebestseller of.
That novel brought her alive,

Baker applied psychology as it was understood in thes and attempted to explain Mary's emotional states and obsessions by calling her a narcissist, I did not totally buy that, Life was violent in earlys Kentucky where she was raised, She lost her mother at a young age and later lost three of her four children to illnesses for which there was not workable medicine, Then she lost Abe. That makes a grieving woman, not a narcissist,

She single handedly created the role of First Lady as we see it to this day, She was a victim of some dastardly patriarchal males, simply because she was outgoing and got stuff done, So what if she liked to go shopping She turned the White House into the showplace it needed to be for a President and world leader, She was the original shopaholic and would be showered with acclaim in today's world, Her remaining son had her committed to an insane asylum on the grounds that she could not handle her finances, even though she made do despite being denied the pension she should have had for the widow of the man who preserved the Union.
Good God! "A striking successthe account of the White House years is absorbing, the account of Mary Lincoln's life as a widow utterly compelling, " New York Times This definitive biography of Mary Todd Lincoln beautifully conveys her tumultuous life and times, A privileged daughter of the proud clan that founded Lexington, Kentucky, Mary fell into a stormy romance with the raw Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln, For twentyfive years the Lincolns forged opposing temperaments into a tolerant, loving marriage, Even as the nation suffered secession and civil war, Mary experienced the tragedies of losing three of her four children and then her husband, An insanity trial orchestrated by her surviving son led to her confinement in an asylum, Mary Todd Lincoln is still often portrayed in one dimension, as the stereotype of the besthated faults of all women, Here her life is restored for us whole,pages of illustrations.