James L. Swanson is something of a Lincoln obsessive. How obsessive? Well, he’s considered an authority for evaluating Lincoln-related artifacts and relics, and he has quite a collection himself — including a lock of Lincoln’s hair. (He can also name-drop Doris Kearns Goodwin!) Swanson was born on Lincoln’s birthday, and could visit several Lincoln-related sites in his childhood: he quickly became interested in history and was showered with Lincoln-related gifts on his birthday from toys to books. So personally attached to Lincoln is he that when he came into possession of a lock of Abe’s hair, he drove to the Petersen House in Washington D.C. and stood outside the locked doors so that he could let the history overwhelm him. This book is partially a memoir of how a man becomes intoxicated by history — by place, personalities, and stories — but also a reflection on how important material history is. Swanson emphasizes the importance of place and object to connect people to history: there is value from standing in the place where history happened, to touching a newspaper that 1860s Washingtonians clutched with disbelieving hands, that cannot be matched by computer displays and text on a page. This is why he frequently visits Ford’s Theater, the Petersen house, and other locales associated with Lincoln’s death and Booth’s attempted escape. While I was primed to enjoy this book — being a history obsessive myself, visiting sites to aid in my study of events, even so I found it a little odd for a book. One has to approach it from the fact that it’s intensely personal, at first, since it focuses on the author’s childhood and such, but then also tolerate the amount of time spent pondering Lincoln artifacts, especially “blood relics”. That was a fairly morbid section, but weirdly interesting in its own right: Swanson says that so many locks were cut from Lincoln’s head that the man was lucky to have not been buried bald, and evidently everything else connected to the death was also cut up or stolen. Sheets, pillows, women’s bloodstained dresses! As a history buff, I enjoyed listening to a fellow buff talk for 3+ hours on his pet subject, but it’s a hard book to recommend unless you also share his obsession, or at least his ability to become obsessed. As it is, now I have to read his book Manhunt, where he exhaustively traces the twelve days of Booth’s attempt to elude the Federals.

Also: Did you know JFK was buried without his brain? His brain is MISSING! (RFK probably hid it somwhere as best I can tell from going on a google brain-hunt.)

Um, I may have ordered another casual Lincoln book. But not to worry, Eisenhower is still in the driver’s seat, at least until I decide on what to read for LBJ.