Audio Books of 2018: A Year In Review

It's that time of year. Magazines make lists of the top movies, most important books famous people who passed away, significant events and other such things. While looking over my past 11+ years of blogging I noticed how in 2010 I'd shared a list of audio books I'd listened to that year.

In case you haven't noticed, I like books. I like reading them, and when sufficiently motivated I like writing them. And, I especially enjoy sharing what I've been reading. So without further adieu, here are the audio books I have completed in 2018 (an exception is cited.) There have been at least two or three dozen additional audio books begun but abandoned for various reasons, most frequently because I did not want to remain in the company of the reader for one reason or another. Occasionally a book is so tedious it gets lost in the weeds, or rather its own minutia. And so, here is my list... (with hot links on those I have written about elsewhere.)

Audiobooks 2018

1. Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams

2. The Death of Ivan Ilyich . Tolstoy
This was my second reading. Am thinking I may read it again in 2019.

3. The Innovators:  How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution . Walter Isaacson

4. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men . David Foster Wallace
Wallace is a great writer. Was not my favorite book.

5. A Lowcountry Heart [Reflections on a Writing Life] .  Pat Conroy
Made me feel I have been missing something by not reading him sooner.

6. Invisible Man . Ralph Ellison
Blown away by its power.. I read about one-third intending to finish later... which I must do.

7. Shane .  Jack Schaefer
A childhood favorite. Have read it a couple times over course of a lifetime. This was third time.

8. Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success . Phil Jackson
You can read the review.

9. In Their Lives [Great Writers On Great Beatles Songs]
Rewarding.

10. Both Flesh and Not [essays] . David Foster Wallace
Wallace is superb.

11. Murder in the Mews: Three Perplexing Cases for Poirot . Agatha Chistie

12. My Life in Middlemarch . Rebecca Mead
A original memoir, a unique approach to sharing the meanings of one's life experiences.

13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . Kesey, Ken
Second reading, as I'd watched the film again this year. An incredible book.

14. Filthy Rich [A powerful billionaire, the sex scandal that undid him, and all the justice that money can buy : the shocking true story of Jeffrey Epstein] . James Patterson
How the other half live. That is, how justice is seldom served when it comes to people with power. Sad.

15. Endless Night . Agatha Christie

16. The Truth Matters : A citizen's guide to separating facts from lies and stopping fake news in its tracks . Bruce R. Bartlettought the paperback afterwards.
Useful and important. I b

17. Heart of Darkness . Joseph Conrad

18. Star Island . Carl Hiaasen
A romp like all his books.

19. Richistan: A journey through the American wealth boom and the lives of the new rich . Robert Frank

20. Razor Girl .  Carl Hiassen

21. Skinny Dip .  Carl Hiassen

22. Collected Fictions . Jorge Luis Borges
Same reader as LikeWar, which made me like LikeWar all the more.
Borges was a chief influence in my fiction writing.

23. James Madison: The Fourth President .  Garry Wills
Many insights about a president I knew little about.
 
24. Andrew Jackson .  Robert Remini

25. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less .  Barry Schwartz
Excellent book. Explains a lot of things we get frustrated with.

26. The Cold War Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace . Paul Thomas Chamberlin
An important book for all of us, but especially Baby Boomers who lived through much of this.

27. The Untold Story of the Talking Book .  Matthew Rubery

28. We Die Alone .  David Howarth
A compelling read from start to finish. Superb writing, made all the more powerful because it really happened.

29. The Year of Less [How I stopped shopping, gave away my belongings, and discovered life is worth more than anything you can buy in a store] . Cait Flanders

30. The Flight [Charles Lindbergh's daring and immortal 1927 transatlantic crossing] . Dan Hampton

31. Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics, Explained by its Most Brilliant Teacher
This is a set of six lectures by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman

32. Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America . Walter Borneman
Another of the presidents I knew little about.

33. Dopesick [dealers, doctors, and the drug company that addicted America]
Some would call this unbalanced reporting as the author has an agenda. A lot of good research and insightful.

34. Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 - Especially a Republican . Ann Coulter
Same as #33.

35. LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media . P.W. Singer

* * * *

So many books, so little time.

My list of non-audio books is longer and shorter, many read for specific portions as research for other things. Some still in process. I found my re-reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil to be a thought provoking and rewarding read this year, prompted in part by Gordon Marino's The Existentialist's Survival Guide, subtitled How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age. 

An important idea set in motion this year was this one: In matters of virtue, one of the most needful virtues for our time is for courage.

Much more could be said, but that is always the case, is it not?  May your holiday season be rewarding and meaningful. Merry Christmas. And I'll catch you on the flip side. 

The Untold Story of the Talking Book Is Quite a Story + 10 Insights I Never Considered Before.

As any follower of this blog knows, I'm a reader of talking books while commuting. There have been occasions over the years when someone will make a dismissive remark about listening to books is not really reading. Though the mildly abrasive dismissal would be disregarded as floof, it eventually became clear to me over time that listening to books is not considered real reading in some circles.

So I found it quite delightful to discover a whole book devoted to this matter, which I'd been listening to, I mean reading, this past week during my commute. The Untold Story of the Talking Book is Matthew Rubery's contribution to the debate, recounting the history of audio books beginning with Thomas Edison's recording of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a tinfoil surface that could be played by phonograph in 1877. Today's audiobook industry is a billion dollar business.

What's fascinating in this story is how many different arguments arose along the way, and how many funny predictions about the future were generated by this "new" technology. For example, there were some who said audio books would replace printed books. In retrospect we see a lot of similarity between that prediction and the kinds of statements made with other inventions. Radio would disappear eventually when eclipsed by television, supposedly. Television would disappear when the Internet was in full swing. Retail stores will disappear when eclipsed by Amazon.

The author was in part motivated to research the topic because he himself liked audio books but was self-conscious about saying so in light of the nay-sayers. Here are a few of the insights that stuck with me after reading this audio book.

1. Edison expected the "talking book" to take of faster than it did. Ultimately it was half a century before the first full length novel had been recorded and reproduced.

2. Though many blind people welcomed talking books, there were also braille readers who felt listening to audio books wasn't really reading. Even though only 15% or so of blind people could read braille, there were some who quite opposed to the idea. Reading braille requires "deciphering code" which is more like deciphering letters on a page.

3. After World War 1 there were many soldiers who had been left blind as a result of injuries. Audio books were an easier way to "read" than having to learn braille. This became the impetus for the acceptance of audio book recordings, in album form at that time.

What was interesting, though, is that there were only a couple hundred soldier who had become blind. Even though there were tens of thousands of blind people already hungry for this new technology, it was sympathy for these newly blinded that pulled on the heartstrings of the masses to fund the mass recording of audio books.

4. The next debate had to do with censorship. Some books should not be made available to the blind, like Flaubert's Madame Bovary. But then, who has the authority to decide what was decent and indecent?

5. Which led to the next debate regarding one of the advantages of braille. No one would know what book I was reading under the covers, whereas if I'm listening to audio books...

6. The logistics of shipping and storage of audio books could be a problem. One novel could be 80 discs. War and Peace and the Bible were closer to 200.

EdNote: The first time I read the Bible through I found the book of Leviticus to be quite tedious. Because I had a blind friend who had a full set of albums of the Bible on recorded discs, read by Alexander Scourby, I borrowed the Book of Leviticus to listen to. I tethered my mind to the reader and forced myself to plow through. It worked!

EdNote 2: This experience taught me how storytelling is much easier to engage with than blah-blah-blah data. Whether you're in advertising, PR, sales or sipping a brew with your best friend's girl, stories will be much more engaging than "just the facts, ma'am."

7. The whole debate about whether a talking book is a book led to a reminder that throughout human history the village storyteller passed the tribe's knowledge on orally. Gutenberg and the printing press was a relatively modern development. If the Pentateuch was indeed scribed by Moses, as is claimed for itself, then everything that he recorded must have been passed down to him orally.

8. Another fascinating thought was this one. The author points out that the introduction of every new technology calls into question the previous competing technologies and causes us to think more deeply about both. Folk guitars and electric guitars, for example. In Hollywood, "talkies" did indeed eclipse silent films, but Michael Crichton was wrong when in the mid-nineties he told the National Press Club that the Internet would eliminate television.

9. Some argued against audio books because the listener would be more passive. Reading requires engagement, or so they said. (Are you still with me?)

10. One more major battle area had to do with how the books were read. Should they be read by professional actors or by straight readers who do not "add" to the reading? What about sound effects, as in radio theater? Does this add or interfere? (Personally, I totally dislike it.) Much debate swirled around many of these decisions.

* * * *
In short, I had no idea there were so many dimensions to this story. Today we have downloadable books on Audible and iTunes, CDs and streaming audio. One sci fi writer, a contemporary of Jules Verne, had a story in which people had audio books in their hats which they could listen to wherever they went. A Sony Walkman? It seemed fantastical at the time.

Bottom Line: If you don't want to call audio books reading, fine. They are great companions anyways. I just finished a biography of James Madison the week before, a president we seem to know so little about today, yet whose ideas are totally embedded in the founding fibers of our nation. But that's a story for another day.

Here's Matthew Rubery's book on Amazon.com

Writing Tip #14: Audio Books

ADVICE TO YOUNG WRITERS DEPT.

At a certain point in time writing became a calling for me. It wasn't just something I wanted to do because I liked doing it. Rather, there was a sense of divine appointment, a sense in which the meaning of my life was associated with it.

Once I had this understanding I began to do everything in my power to excel at it. I read the writers magazines, attended writers conferences and read as many books about writing as I could find, gleaning insights from each and making them my own. One of these, Sherwood Wirt's You Can Tell the World, made a special point of saying that if we want to write great literature we must be readers of great literature, familiar not only with the names but the works themselves. So it was that I began a crash course on great literature.

Not that I'd never read classic books before. My college years were devoted primarily to philosophy and art. I was simply behind. Audio books enabled me to play catch up.

It was quite surprising to see how many authors had been recorded. The first one that I listened to was a Joseph Conrad story, The Lagoon, recorded by some British actor with a deep resonant voice not unlike our more contemporary James Earl Jones. His rendition of the story moved me. The story is potent and the delivery was up to the task. I immediately became a fan of Conrad.

Next I began taking out sets of cassettes from the library. The short stories of Jack London. The short stories of Ernest Hemingway. The short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. My evenings were full with writing or social obligations, so while painting apartments in Minneapolis I would listen to literature. Multi-tasking, before the word had been coined and adopted as a cultural norm.

The audio cassette market eventually yielded to CDs with millions of books being sold each year. Libraries filled with these, too, in time. With the advent of broadband internet, digital books became as easy to download as videos and movies and now represent more than 60% of the market.

The real message here has to do with commitment and making sacrifices. In his opening chapter Wirt states, "If you have been ordained to write, woe to you if you put everything else first."

When you're young I don't believe it's possible to realize how much time there is in a life, nor how much one can accomplish once you choose to give it focus. Examples abound....

So what are you waiting for? Seize the day!

Five Minutes with Award Winning Narrator Grover Gardner

I've been reading audio books for more than a dozen years now probably. Both of our libraries have good collections. But one thing an audio book benefits from that a printed volume is exempt from is a good narrator. Some readers you just put up with because you want to hear the book. Others are very good and are like icing on the cake. One of these I have listened to so many times that he's almost like an old friend. His name is Grover Gardner. His style is a perfect balance of restraint and, where suitable, empathy.

The first Elmore Leonard audio book I ever listened to was Mr. Majestyk. I liked it so much I've listened to it several times over the years, along with many of Mr. Leonard's books including Out of Sight, Get Shorty and others. Little did I know that half the reason I enjoyed these books so much was due to the reader. But now I understand this and whenever an audio book begins with this voice which has become so familiar to me, I know it will be a better experience because he is accompanying me through the story.

Over the years I've listened to many books narrated by Grover Gardner, most recently the deeply moving Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. But his repertoire includes C.S. Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Umberto Eco, Will Durant, John Grisham, Michener, Kerouac and other household names.

This is the first time I've ever gone out of my way to thank a narrator of one of the books I've listened to. I commend him to all of you. There is a link to a lengthy list of Mr. Gardner's 650-plus readings at the end of this blog.

Ennyman: What was your career path from student to award winning audio book narrator?

Grover Gardner: I began narrating for the Library of Congress' "Talking Book" program when I was a graduate student in Washington, D.C. That was in 1984. A fellow narrator, Flo Gibson, started her own company a couple of years later, and hired me to narrate commercial audio books for her. From there I began working for Books On Tape, then Blackstone, and on from there.

E: How and when did you discover you had a gift at speaking and reading?

GG: As a kid I loved listening to old time radio comedy, and from high school on I had thought it would be great to read books out loud, for the radio or some medium. I seem to recall making cassette tapes of sketches and stories, adding background music, things like that. In college I spent a lot of time in the radio station, but it wasn't until I was hired to narrate some magazines for the blind that I realized there was a whole industry devoted to what I wanted to do.

E: Are there things audio book readers do to develop their voices?

GG: No. Apart from being pleasant and easy on the ear, the voice doesn't have that much to do with it. We just think it does because the great narrators are so intelligent and use their voices to convey the ideas behind the text.

E: Your readings show remarkable range, and so many classics. How do you choose the projects you undertake? Or rather, how much freedom do you have in selecting what you read?
GG: As Studio Director for Blackstone I naturally get to pick and choose a bit, which is nice. In the broader freelance market narrators are assigned titles. The more in demand you are, the more you have the luxury of turning down the occasional project that doesn't really suit you. But by and large narrators are dependent on the casting smarts of the audio publishers.

E: I've listened to nearly all of the Elmore Leonard books you’ve read, a few several times, and the Hemingway books also. I was not aware that you’ve also read numerous books by Evangelicals like A.W. Tozer, J.I. Packer, John Piper and Eugene Peterson. Do you have a favorite author from this vast range of audio titles you’ve helped produce?

GG: Elmore Leonard was great fun to record. Mark Twain is an especial favorite of mine. The John Gardner novels I recorded years ago for Books On Tape (October Light, The Sunlight Dialogues), now sadly o/o/p, were memorable.

The Cider House Rules has always remained a favorite. Lately the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois Bujold has been a joy to do. Also the David Rosenfelt series for Listen and Live, those are great fun. And Ross Macdonald is an indulgence. I think the best thing I've done is Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones. No one listens to it because the subject matter is so ghastly, but it's my favorite book because it's so dark and subversive. No one who enjoys hearing me do an Andy Carpenter mystery would want to sit through it.

In terms of non-fiction, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb was one of the best books I've ever read, about anything. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was titanic and utterly absorbing. Shelby Foote's The Civil War and Will Durant's Story of Civilization (all eleven volumes!) were landmark recordings in their day.

E: Thank you for your services in the advancement of literature.

Check out Grover Gardner's full catalog here.

Readings 2010

From time to time I comment here on the various audio books I am reading while commuting to work. I've had more than one person dispute with me that listening to a book is not the same as reading it, but I would suggest that it has at least some similarity to reading in that your mind is engaging the ideas of a writer who has worked very hard to produce words to convey a story or ideas or whatever.

What follows here is an incomplete list of books I have listened to. I say imcomplete because it is a record of the audio books I checked out of the Duluth Public Library, but does not include the audio books I listened to from the Superior Public Library. That library erases your record after your return items, Duluth does not so that I can go back in time and review everything I have ever checked out.

The Duluth list did include many more audio books than this, but some I only listened to half or a third and some even less. Occasionally it might be a frame of mind that kept me from getting into a good book, occassionally the writing itself may have been uninteresting and on a few occasions the reader was simply annoying and I did not want to be in that person's company for the duration.

Anyways, here's my 2010 list, including remarks on a few of the items.

1. Billy Collins Live: A performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space, April 20, 2005

Nation's Poet Laurate is superb, as always.
2. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory by George Musser
3. Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan

This was my second reading of Dylan's autobiography. The first was when the book itself came out.

4. An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina

The Rwanda story that became the film Hotel Rwanda. Powerfully engaging.
5. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Probably third or fourth reading.
6. On Call In Hell: A Doctor’s Iraq War Story by Richard Jadick
7. The Hot Kid by Elmore Leonard

The library has more Leonard audio books on tape than CD, and not enough to satisfy me.
8. James Madison, the Fourth President by Garry Willis
9. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

With its final chapter included, the chapter not included in Kubrick's version.
10. The Accidental Billiionaires: Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

Now a film, the story of Facebook's origins.
11. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie
12. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
13. Appointment with Death: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie
14. A Pocketful of Rye by Agatha Christie
15. The Labours of Hercules: 12 Hercule Poirot Mysteries by Agatha Christie
16. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
17. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Interesting novel about India today.
18. Three Act Tragedy, A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie
19. Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

Author of Remains of the Day.
20. Fierce Pajamas: Selections from an Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker
21. Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer
22. My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru

Intriguing story of a Sixties radical whose past comes back to haunt him.
23. Sideways by Rex Pickett

Became the film... and very well written.
24. Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley

Hilarious novel about politics and more.
25. Conquistador Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy

26. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
27. Fidel Castro, My Life: An Autobiography by Fidel Castro
Lengthy, detailed account with many interesting details about "the Revolution" and Cuba's recent history.

28. Spy Killer by L. Ron Hubbard

Mediocre, but I stuck with it just because.
29. Plato & a Platypus Walk Into a Bar--: Understanding Philosphy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart

Some interesting things but not for everyone.
30. Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President by Robert Dallek

Good portrait of a president not high on everyone's list, but who made the tough decisions required at a tough time in history.
31. Superfreakanomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
32. On The Wealth of Nations by P.J. O’Rourke

Playful review of a significant book.
33. Call Me Ted by Ted Turner
34. Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance by Tony Dungy

Highly recommended, especially for young men.
35. Taking Woodstock: A True Story of Riot, a Concert and a Life by Elliot Tiber
36. The Man Who Loved China: Joseph Needham and the Making of a Masterpiece by Simon Winchester
37. Eyewitness: 1910-1919 by Joanna Burke

BBC production that made the decade come alive.
38. Limitations by Scott Turow
39. Yogi Berra by Allen Barra

Detailed biography of a great ballplayer, rich with anecdotes and baseball lore.

Cut paper picture of the Buddha by author/artist Ellen Sandbeck.

Call Me Ted

"I did it my way." ~ Frank Sinatra

I'm currently reading Ted Turner's autobiography and it is quite fascinating. (For purists, I am actually listening to the audio book, which may be even more interesting because Ted himself is narrating with his distinctive Southern drawl. It also includes anecdotal stories by others in their own voices.)

It would be hard not to be aware of who the man is, but in all likelihood few of us know the full details of his roots and the formative features of his life. I find it interesting how a person goes from being a kid in a boarding school to becoming a multi-billionaire. In his intro he makes the tongue in cheek remark that he lost eighty per cent of his wealth at one point, but that somehow he is finding a way to make do on a couple billion dollars.

It's interesting to hear how he loved his father even though the guy could be violently abusive. He learned many things about business from his dad, and perhaps it was the mix of being at boarding school away from home, having a sister die early in life and having grown up working the business from an early age that instilled in him the creative spark that makes him one of a kind.

By telling the story one sees how the path made sense. They were in the billboard business. Billboards don't always sell, so when he got some radio stations, he used the unsold billboards to sell radio. He was in radio because initially he could not afford to get into television, but once he did he didn't follow the herd. He observed what was happening and did it his way.

When he got into television, he ran it like a business, which was not the way it happened to be going when he took it over. Most of the 35 employees were slugs on drugs who just loafed about and had no drive, no vision, no understanding what a business was supposed to be. He turned the station around and began looking at where the opportunities lay. What did people want that they couldn't get via the primary networks. Like me, he thought a lot of television programming was just stupid drivel. So he began airing classic films. He would sit in an easy chair and introduce the films, build a rapport with viewers.

Another niche which he exploited was baseball. The network affiliate only aired some of the games and he felt that fans would like more than just "some" which he intuited correctly. He became so tight with the Atlanta Braves that when the owners decided to bail (they had such a poor team and not only lost games they also lost fans and revenue) they offered it to Ted.

It's a great story, how he dove into the Braves as both a businessman and a fan. He was not your typical owner, as the many anecdotes point out.

Alongside all this is his sailing interest and the many lessons he learned which he applied to his business life. It is a good example of how our passions can contribute to the successes we experience in other areas of our careers. Early in life he became fascinated with boats. The stories about these experiences remind me a little of Richard Branson's experiences pushing the limits both in boating and ballooning. Neither of these men is an accidental billionaire. Each took risks, and both leveraged their successes to achieve greater success.

I'm but one third through the book, but know there is much of interest still to come. While not a perfect role model in every regard, he certainly makes an entertaining companion when commuting... or running to the hardware store as I am about to do.

And in case I don't see ya, have a great weekend.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates: Much Ado About Something

"My Fellow Citizens: When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him--at least, I find it so with myself; but when misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse him." ~ Abraham Lincoln, Opening words in the first debate, Ottawa, IL.

As followers of this blogspot know, I an avid listener to audio books while I commute, whether to the office each day or to the store or wherever. The same maxim, "Too many books, too little time" applies equally to audio books as to the printed page.

The opportunities for personal development in any field are seemingly limitless with audio books, lectures, talks, whatever your mind sets about to take in. Currently, I'm listening to the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, a fascinating experience.

Who among us, who has even the faintest echo of American history within them, has not heard of the series of debates between then-senator Stephen Douglas and Illinois candidate Abraham Lincoln. Yet I'd be willing to bet less than one in ten thousand Americans have read the transcripts of these debates.

At this point I admit, I've been in the majority, though years ago I did purchase and listen to a set of audio recordings of the writings and speeches of Abraham Lincoln performed by Raymond Massey in which one item was from this set of debates. I must tell you, however, that you owe it to yourself to listen to or read the entirety of these speeches, or if nothing else the first round of seven Lincoln-Douglas exchanges, which took place in Ottawa, Illinois in August 1858. If you can find the audio book, performed by Richard Dreyfuss as Stephen Douglas and David Straithairn as Mr. Lincoln, even better.

It's amazing to listen to an American Senator make statements like this one, that American should be a "White Nation" and that Negroes have no rights here. Even while defending the right of a Northern state to outlaw slavery, he states straight up that the negro should in no way ever have the rights whites enjoy.

To support this viewpoint, Douglas appealed both to history and to the Supreme Court, which declared that the negro was not a person who had rights.

Today we take all these things for granted, that Hispanics, Asians, Blacks, Native Americans are people, persons, human beings for whom the statement, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal" is intended to be applied across-the-board. It's quite bracing to hear Senator Douglas speak as if this obvious truth were a falsehood without merit.

In this debate Douglas mocked Lincoln's speech of the previous June in which Lincoln declared, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Douglas noted that the nation has so stood for seventy years. In Lincoln's rebuttal he noted that Douglas was not mocking Lincoln, but mocking the words of Jesus. (Matthew 12:25)

During the course of the 1858 campaign Lincoln gave 60 speeches and Douglas 130 across the great state of Illinois. There were but seven face-to-face encounters, but these were momentous, outlining and defining the issues which tore at the heart of a maturing nation.

Douglas did not mince words. "Now I say to you frankly that in my opinion this Government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by the white men for the benefit of the white men and their posterity forward, and was intended to be administered in all time to come by white men."

In contrast, Mr. Lincoln stood firm. "There is no reason... why the Negro after all is not entitled to all that the Declaration of Independence holds out... In the right to eat the bread which his own hands earn, he is my equal and Judge Douglas' equal, and the equal of every living man."

Ultimately, Mr. Lincoln took a bullet in the head for these convictions.

Lincoln is famous for his skill at turning a phrase, and for his clever use of language. As I reflect on these debates unfolding here, as I listen to these two men wrangling about the issues of the day I am struck by this thought: it isn't eloquence or lack of eloquence that makes a great man, but what he stands for.


If interested in reading the actual text of these debates, you can check them out here.