Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

DiLorenzo's book challenged virtually everything I thought I knew about Lincoln, so I did the logical thing - I looked into what points his critics cited in panning his book. I was surprised by what I found. Most critics challenged his "right" to be a historian, slamming him for citing the wrong edition of a book (right page, wrong edition), or citing to the wrong page of a book. Other criticisms were conclusory and not fact-based. When the smoke had cleared, it seemed that the major criticisms were nits picked by those adored Lincoln. None confronted DiLorenzo's facts. (This is a far cry from, for example, the Michael A. Bellesiles book, "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture", whose critics shredded the book on a factual basis.) So I read the book. And was blown away. Here is the explanation for how America went from the land of the free to the land of the government-dominated. Here is a thorough explanation how the Federal Government went from a minimalist government with scant intrusion into the lives of its people, to the modern day Leviathan which consumes 1/3 of every dollar we earn and gives us endless regulation and grief. Here is the seed of the welfare state, the precursor to Roosevelt's "New Deal" and Johnson's "Great Society" - and the beginning of the end of the Constitution. Lincoln locked up thousands of those who disagreed with him. He cared not at all about slavery as a moral issue. He created the sort of Federal spending on programs that were previously successful private ventures, and which, as government programs, have put us trillions of dollars in debt. He destroyed the sovereignty of the states and laid the groundwork for George Bush to imprison people without charges, without access to counsel, without the right to confront accusers and ultimately without right to trial. Dilorenzo's book helped me to see Lincoln in a new light. Lincoln: Responsible for more American deaths than any other president (nearly as many were killed in Lincoln's conquest of the Southern states than in all other wars combined). Lincoln: A war criminal who sent armies to attack the civilians of the South (not just Sherman, but all his generals). Lincoln: Consolidating government power over the people though the use of gun and bayonet. Lincoln: America's Joe Stalin. Read this book.