Birthday Present

LINCOLN TALKS--Edited by Emanuel Hertz--Viking ($3).

Nobody has ever considered Abe Lincoln a stuffed shirt, but just to make sure, recent biographers have stripped him down to his gaunt ribs. With The Hidden Lincoln, published last year on Lincoln's birthday, Emanuel Hertz identified himself as one of Lincoln's most active denuders. This year, again as a birthday present, Hertz has the grace to throw around Lincoln's bony shoulders a vast mantle of myth. It fits no better than Lincoln's baggy suits did, but as Editor Hertz knows, no editorial tailor will ever be able to fit formal clothes on that great torso.

Lincoln Talks consists of some 800 anecdotes lifted from correspondence, newspapers, biographies, books of jokes, gossip, legend. Any Lincoln story is fun to read, and since Editor Hertz frankly tried to collect all the stories rather than all the true stories, this anthology makes particularly easy reading. Its Lincoln is lovable, immensely humorous, quick as an eagle, wise as an owl, gentle as a dove. For the rest, the book adds to the bulk if not to the substance of the honest truth about Honest Abe.

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