One of the best Essential books on Lincoln under one cover

He believed in God, but wasn’t much of a Christian. And to ease the stress of his agonizing years in the White House, he laughed out loud at a good barnyard joke.

If you’re thinking Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson or perhaps Bill Clinton, you’re in the wrong century. Abraham Lincoln might have been the nation’s greatest chief executive, but he was, after all, a mere mortal. Which may be the reason books are still being written about him 139 years after his death.

“He was a terribly funny man,” said Lincoln author Philip B. Kunhardt Jr. during a recent phone conversation from his home in Chappaqua, N.Y. “He had all kinds of racy stories and he would laugh at them harder than anyone. This helped him cope with the demands of war, the loss of his sons and his wife’s problems.”

Kunhardt, a longtime summer resident of Hancock Point and a former Life magazine managing editor, was gratified to learn last week that two of his illustrated Lincoln histories made the final cut in a new book titled “100 Essential Lincoln Books.” The first, “Twenty Days,” written with his mother, Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, through text and pictures, chronicles the time between Lincoln’s last day alive and his burial in his hometown of Springfield, Ill.

He compiled the other book, 1992’s “Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography,” with two of his sons, Philip B. Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt. Both volumes make excellent use of photos collected by Kunhardt’s grandfather, Frederick Hill Meserve, one of the great archivists of Lincoln photographs.

Michael Burkhimer, a 30-year-old public schoolteacher from Audubon, Pa., read and collected the “100 Essential Lincoln Books” into an affordable ($16.95), usable, 305-page softcover book published in January by Cumberland House of Nashville, Tenn. Burkhimer, the great-great-great-grandson of a Civil War soldier in the 61st Pennsylvania Infantry, has never met Kunhardt, but shares his love of Lincoln’s brilliant and enigmatic personality.

“Lincoln’s sort of under attack right now, especially on the Internet,” Burkhimer said during a telephone interview. “The ‘new left’ claims he was a racist and should have freed the slaves immediately after becoming president. On the right, the neo-Confederates claim he destroyed states’ rights and the Constitution. Quite frankly, a lot of this is junk history, dressed up in a few cherry-picked quotes to prove the South was right.”

The last guide to the best Lincoln books was published in 1946, so Burkhimer had his work cut out for him. Although he wrote this book in six months, he’s been devouring much of the estimated 14,000 Lincoln books and pamphlets since a childhood visit to the Gettysburg battlefield hooked him on the Civil War and the president’s legacy.

Burkhimer admits his book isn’t the last word on Lincoln literature, it’s only a research tool. His 100 chapters, starting with an 1866 reminiscence by Francis B. Carpenter and ending with William Lee Miller’s 2002 “ethical biography,” are so readable and concise, even young readers could understand them. He eschews historical fiction such as Gore Vidal’s “Lincoln,” but includes studies of Mary Todd Lincoln, even one written by Asia Clarke Booth, the sister of assassin John Wilkes Booth, published long after Lincoln’s death.

Benjamin P. Thomas’ 1952 study, Burkhimer said, “is still probably the best straightforward biography” of Lincoln and his personal favorite.

Maine readers will find scant mention of Lincoln’s first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, who lived and died in Bangor. But, Burkhimer knows of his sterling reputation and, like Kunhardt, can only imagine what the post-war Reconstruction years would have been like without Andrew Johnson at the helm. The impeached Tennessee politician replaced Hamlin in 1864 to balance the ticket, only to become president after Lincoln’s assassination the following year.

“We’re still paying the price for Hamlin being dropped from the ticket,” Burkhimer said. “He was more of a true Republican back then, when the party would have stood behind him.”

Burkhimer and Kunhardt agree that Lincoln rose to greatness only after being elected president.

“He grew out of his prejudices,” Kunhardt said. “By the time he gave his inaugural addresses, he was free of all of his prejudices.”

“Today, presidents promise nice things in their inaugurals,” Burkhimer observed, “but in his second inaugural [in March 1865], Lincoln stood up and said, we deserved this [war]; that it was a just punishment for the North and South allowing slavery to go on. ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all’ were some of the most powerful things a president ever said.”

Kunhardt is working on yet another Lincoln book, drawing on the more than 120 Lincoln photographs known to exist. Its publication will coincide with the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth in 2009.

“Yes, certainly he was our greatest president,” Kunhardt said enthusiastically. “Lincoln towers above them all.”

Dick Shaw can be reached at 990-8204 or rshaw@bangordailynews.net.