“There are so many Lincoln geeks that buy everything new that comes out,” Cathy Langer, the lead book buyer at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, tells Stephanie Cohen of the Wall Street Journal. Cohen goes on to report Langer’s claim “that in her years as a buyer, she has rarely turned down a title about the 16th president.” One such book is Killing Lincoln, which has sold over two million since its release a year ago September. Cohen states some 16,000 books have been written about President Abraham Lincoln, and there’s more to come.
To illustrate the volume of existing Lincoln works, the Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington created a three-story, 34-foot tower sculpture out of Lincoln titles, meant to “symbolize that the last word about this great man will never be written,” according to the center.
Perhaps I should start writing a series of short volumes on the ignored presidents, like Polk, Hayes, Tyler, and Garfield. I could call them Thrilling Histories, e.g. The Thrilling History of James K. Polk. Or maybe they should be called the Presidential Insider’s Guides. Or maybe the What You Didn’t Learn series. (via Frank Wilson)