New Releases from SIU Press

Thanks go out to my great friends at Southern Illinois University Press for sending along a couple of new releases.

First up from author Robert Eckley is Lincolns Forgotten Friend, Leonard Swett. In 1849, while traveling as an attorney on the Eighth Judicial Circuit in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln befriended Leonard Swett (1825–89), a fellow attorney sixteen years his junior. Despite this age difference, the two men built an enduring friendship that continued until Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Until now, no historian has explored Swett’s life or his remarkable relationship with the sixteenth president. In this welcome volume, Robert S. Eckley provides the first biography of Swett, crafting an intimate portrait of his experiences as a loyal member of Lincoln’s inner circle.

Hardcover, 306 pages, 253 pages of text, index, notes, bibliography, b/w photos, ISBN 9780809332052, $34.95.

Author Guy C. Fraker brings us Lincolns Ladder to the Presidency: The Eighth Judicial Circuit. Throughout his twenty-three-year legal career, Abraham Lincoln spent nearly as much time on the road as an attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit as he did in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Yet most historians gloss over the time and instead have Lincoln emerge fully formed as a skillful politician in 1858. In this innovative volume, Guy C. Fraker provides the first-ever study of Lincoln’s professional and personal home away from home and demonstrates how the Eighth Judicial Circuit and its people propelled Lincoln to the presidency.

Hardcover, 328 pages, 258 pages of text, index, notes, bibliography, b/w photos, 3 maps, ISBN 9780809332014, $34.95.




 




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