South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Bio captures Lincoln, wart and all
Jon Meacham’s excellent new biography, “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle,” illuminates how Abraham Lincoln’s personal growth and travails enabled the 16th president to lead a nation along a fitful evolution toward freedom despite a catastrophic rebellion that denied it. Fueling the national disaster was the “Big Lie” of Lincoln’s day — that slavery was a justifiable institution.
Meacham does not portray Lincoln’s back story as mere iconography — the log cabin, the backwoods education, the rail splitting. Rather, this account of his hardscrabble youth is less an any-boy-can-be-president morality tale than a foundation of Lincoln’s personal values and empathy informed by crushing poverty and loss. It is little wonder that Lincoln sought to deliver more fairness in an unfair world.
The light that powered this desire was the gift of literacy acquired in what Lincoln called “A.B.C. schools” and any books he could hungrily consume thereafter. At 23, Lincoln formally entered the political arena, running for office in Illinois. Meacham expertly peels back the historic to reveal the familiar in his coverage of the swirl of politics, largely unchanged to this day.
The author girds his analysis with a comprehensive survey of the variety of social, political and theological writings that influenced Lincoln and resonate across his career. Keenly attuned to public opinion, Lincoln recognized both in himself and the entire nation two realities — anti-Black prejudice and a passionate desire in the North to abolish slavery. It was the same empathy that recoiled from the brutal practice of slavery that also connected him to
the humanity of those who supported it.
An admirer across the Atlantic wrote before the 1864 election that supporters in England observed in Lincoln’s career “a grand simplicity of purpose and patriotism which knows no change and which does not falter.” Meacham’s fine account of America’s greatest president delivers a close-up that captures — wart and all — why Lincoln’s political sensibilities and moral vision were, like the Union itself, indivisible. — Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
It’s not exactly a surprise that Kevin Nealon is a talented guy. After all, he is an accomplished stand-up comic, sketch player, actor and even golfer. But one of the entertainer’s lesser-known gifts became known only recently: caricature art, which is the subject of Nealon’s delightful new book, “I Exaggerate: My Brushes with Fame.”
In it, Nealon, 68, shares original full-color caricatures of some of his celebrity pals as well as other famous folks he knows a little, or not at all. Each portrait is matched with an essay written about the person by the “Saturday Night Live” alum.
The subjects run the gamut of popular culture: actors Jennifer Aniston, Timothee Chalamet and Anya Taylor-Joy; athletes Peyton Manning, Eli Manning and Arnold Palmer; musicians Lady Gaga, Freddie Mercury and James Taylor; comedians Jim Carrey, David Letterman and Steve Martin; and dozens more.
The caricatures are a joy to look at, each capturing the spirit of the subject in a way that only a skilled artist — and a person with keen observational skills — could produce.
The accompanying essays are more of a mixed bag. The ones that focus on friends and those with whom Nealon has a shared experience jump off the page and are a fitting complement to the drawings. The others can be a bit of a tougher read, because, in some cases, Nealon isn’t really revealing much about an already well-known person.
If readers are only focused on the essays, they’ll fly through the breezy, funny and enjoyable “I Exaggerate.” But, if they’re anything like this reviewer, they’ll spend most of their time staring at the intricate and thoughtful illustrations. Readers may come for the stories, but they’ll stay for the caricatures. — Mike Householder, Associated Press