This article (along with a very good picture), about Abraham Lincoln's depression, is very interesting. It was written by Jim Higgins of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It comes from our local Reporter-Times Newspaper. I have no personal interest in this book, (other than that I am eager to read it), however I find what Mr. Shenk writes about to be 'history related. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 'EXALTED SADNESS' 'Lincoln's Melancoly': How Depression Challenged A President and Fueled His Greatness. Author: Joshua Wolf Shenk Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Pages: 368. Lincoln's depression helped make him great, independent scholar says. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Abraham Lincoln, possibly America's greatest president, would be unelectable today for so many reasons; his homely looks, his piping voice, his lack of access to big money. And yes, his sober, even gloomy, mien would be jarringly untelegenic in an age when presidents are expected to radiate confidence and manly optimism. In "Lincoln's Melancholy," writer and independent scholar Joshua Wolf Shenk labors mightily (and there's a Lincolnesque phrase for you) to recover the context and value of Lincoln's mental and emotional suffering for contemporary readers. Just as Lincoln is widely seen today as a self-made man in education and politics, Shenk also sees him as self-made psychologically and spiritually through his lifelong grapple with depression and melancholia. Shenk might have called the book "Lincoln's Search for Meaning," after Viktor Frankl's work; Frankl is among the dozens of writers and thinkers on depression, mental illness, suffering and dread that Shenk enlists here. Shenk probes the causes and Lincoln's response to specific major depressions including breakdowns and suicidal thoughts; the future president's tendency to chronic depression; and, most fascinating for contemporary readers, Lincoln's melancholy temperament. While we may think of our times as a psychological age, there was more tolerance and understanding in Lincoln's day for such an Eeyore. A melancholy temperament was considered to have advantages as well as drawbacks. To cope with his demons, Lincoln relied on homely but effective tools. He wrote and recited poetry. His verse was sometimes gloomy enough to please a Goth. He read humor and told jokes, even through the lowest ebbs of the Civil War. He worked hard. He was not conventionally religious - Shenk calls him a freethinker -- but he was a seeker, and he came to be both moved and consoled by his growing belief that he had a mission on Earth and must attend to it. Shenk's study is a detailed examination of one facet of the Lincoln diamond. This shouldn't be the first or even second book that anyone reads about Lincoln. A good biography and a grounding in Lincoln's own words (he's the best writer of America's presidents) should come first. It's also an exercise in historiography. Shenk believes Lincoln's contemporaries had an accurate picture of his temperament and insight into his most intensive depressive episodes. He says that later historians discounted or pushed that material aside, an issue he pursues in both the text and a longish afterword. If Lincoln's depression fueled his greatness, as the author claims in his subtitle, then Shenk's personal passion clearly fueled this book. The author knows depression himself; this book is part of his own search for meaning. Intensively written and argued, peppered with mini-lectures and explanations, at times it feels wearily reductive: Did everything Lincoln said or wrote or accomplished somehow grow out of his melancholia or his response to it? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert December 9, 2005 iggy29@rnetinc.net Note: If you would like the article with the picture of Lincoln, I would be happy to send it via jpeg attachment. Just let me know..