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Rodney O. Davis

Born:
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: The author has been a professor at Knox College since 1963.

Biography:


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): History; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: rdavis@knox.edu
Website: http://www.knox.edu
Rodney O. Davis on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=rodney+o.+davis


Selected Titles

Escape betwixt two suns :
ISBN: 0809323001 OCLC: 47008692

Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Ill. : ©2000.

Herndon's informants :
ISBN: 0252023285 OCLC: 36245979

University of Illinois Press, Urbana : ©1998.

Publication of this long-awaited volume makes available for the first time in complete and accessible form the most important source of information on Lincoln's early life. For twenty-five years after the president's death William Herndon, his law partner, conducted interviews with and solicited letters from dozens of persons who knew Lincoln personally. Up to now, the valuable information he collected has been available only in a microfilm edition in the Library of Congress, of such poor quality that it has been rarely used, particularly since there was no table of contents or adequate index, and in collections at the Huntington Library and the Illinois State Historical Library. The only previous publication of Herndon's materials, more than a half century ago, contains less than 10 percent of the collection and is so unreliable that scholars have hesitated to use it. Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis have earned the gratitude and admiration of scholars by taking on the daunting task of collating the collections in the three libraries, painstakingly deciphering the all but illegible handwriting of Herndon and some of his informants, and carefully documenting the entire work.

Herndon's Lincoln /
ISBN: 0252030729 OCLC: 64510508

"William H. Herndon aspired to write a faithful portrait of his friend and law partner, Abraham Lincoln, based on his own observations and on hundreds of letters and interviews he had compiled for the purpose. Even more important, he was determined to present Lincoln as a man, rather than a saint, and to reveal things that the prevailing Victorian conventions said should be left out of the biography of a great national hero." "A variety of obstacles kept Herndon from writing his book, however, and not until he found a collaborator in Jesse W. Weik did the biography begin to take shape. It finally appeared in 1889, to decidedly mixed reviews. Though controversial from the outset, Herndon's Lincoln nonetheless established itself as a classic."

  The life of Abraham Lincoln :
ISBN: 9781151514448 OCLC: 698183124

General Books, LaVergne, TN : 2010.

The life of Abraham Lincoln :
ISBN: 080327985X OCLC: 45731460

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln : ©1999.

  The Lincoln-Douglas debates
ISBN: 9780252079924 OCLC: 192050106

Knox College Lincoln Studies Center : Urbana : ©2008.

While the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas are undoubtedly the most celebrated in American history, they may also be the most consequential as well. For the issues so fiercely debated in 1858 were about various interrelated aspects of one momentous, nation-threatening issue: slavery. The contest between Lincoln and Douglas became a testing ground for the viability of conflicting ideals in a nation deeply divided. One of the most colorful and engaging episodes in American history, this series of debates is of enduring interest as an illuminating instance of the ever-recurring dilemma of self-government: what happens when the guiding principle of democracy, popular sovereignty, confronts a principled stand against a moral, social, and political evil? The tragic answer in this case came three years later: civil war. Important as they are, the Lincoln-Douglas debates have long since ceased to be self-explanatory. This edition is the first to provide a text founded on all known records, rather than following one or another of the partisan and sometimes widely-varying newspaper accounts. Meticulously edited and annotated, it provides numerous aids to help the modern reader understand the debates, including extensive introductory material, commentary, and a glossary. The fullest and most dependable edition of the Lincoln-Douglas debates ever prepared, this edition brings readers as close as possible to the original words of these two remarkable men.

 

 

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