University of Illinois Press

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Author:

Wayne C. Temple Edited by Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson

Editor/Other:

Introduction by Michael Burlingame

Pub Date:

January 2019

Pages:

288 pages

Dimensions:

6 x 9 in.

Illustrations:

5 black & white photographs

Series:

The Knox College Lincoln Studies Center Series

Lincoln Studies Biography & Personal Papers History, Am.: 19th C. See all Subjects

Lincoln's Confidant

The Life of Noah Brooks

The unknown story of one of Lincoln's closest friendships

From the legendary Lincoln scholar Wayne C. Temple comes the long-awaited full-length biography of Noah Brooks, the influential Illinois journalist who championed Abraham Lincoln in Illinois state politics and became his almost daily companion at the White House.

Best remembered as one of the president's few true intimates, Brooks was also a nationally recognized man of letters, who mingled with the likes of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. Temple draws on archives and papers long thought lost to re-create Brooks's colorful life and relationship with Lincoln. Brooks's closeness to the president made him privy to Lincoln's thoughts on everything from literature to spirituality. Their frank conversations contributed to the wealth of journalism and personal observations that would make Brooks's writings a much-quoted source for historians and biographers of Lincoln.

A carefully researched and well-documented scholarly resource, Lincoln's Confidant is the story of an extraordinary friendship by one of the luminaries of Lincoln scholarship.

"By getting to know Noah Brooks, readers will learn a great deal about Abraham Lincoln, thanks to the careful attention of the devoted scholar, Wayne C. Temple."--Samuel Wheeler, Illinois State Historian

"Temple's biography of Brooks is first-rate. The density and breadth of his primary source research is unmatched. Nobody else has presented as thorough a portrait of Brooks from such a wide array of sources."--Matthew Pinsker, author of Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home

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Wayne C. Temple worked at the Illinois State Archives from 1964 to 2016. The latest in his long list of Lincoln publications is Lincoln's Surgeons at His Assassination. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis are codirectors of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and the coeditors of Herndon's Informants, Herndon on Lincoln: Letters, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and Herndon's Lincoln.

University of Illinois