The

The Our guest today is Dr. David S. Reynolds, a historian who has written extensively on the Civil War era.

He's won numerous awards, including the Bancroft Prize and

the Ambassador Book Award, just to name a few. And he is the author of the book Abe, Abraham

Lincoln, in his times. Professor Reynolds, thank you for being on our show.

Great to be here. Richard, thank you. Great. So much is made about President Lincoln's

lack of experience and his many supposed professional failures prior to winning the presidency. But

you seem to push back against this narrative. So what's the real story here?

Yeah, one of the best books on him, David Donald's Lincoln, one of the better known books,

actually says very frankly that no president has ever entered the highest office being the least prepared,

less prepared than Lincoln, that he was the least prepared of all.

And on the surface, it kind of looks that way because he had less than one year of education,

just primary school education, and that was it.

And he didn't go through any formal, formal self-education either.

But what I found is that he had something far more important.

He was insatiably curious. what I found is that he had something far more important.

He was insatiably curious.

If he were on the law circuit around Illinois, he would go to a farmer and say,

how does that machine work? And what brand of cow is that and that pig over there?

What, you know, can he describe that to me?

And very, very curious about the world around him.

And also he loved to read poetry in particular, newspapers, but also poetry.

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