Daniel Sullivan of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution gives a well-thought-of review of “The Eloquent President”. Read the complete text of the review here. He writes:
...the Eloquent President argues most forcefully and convincingly the importance of Lincoln’s rhetoric in his politics, and of rhetoric in general to all republican politics. This is the basis of the book. “It cannot be denied,” White admits in his epilogue, “that the modern shibboleth ‘It’s only words’ has sometimes seemed to win the day. This portrait of Lincoln has turned on the axis that words matter. . . . Many today might complete the shibboleth by adding ‘. . . as opposed to actions.’ In this account of Lincoln, words are actions.” Not exclusively a Lincoln scholar, White seems to have been drawn to Lincoln studies largely by the sixteenth president’s speeches and how they all fit together.
Jennifer L. Weber writes a review essay of “The Eloquent President” in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. An excerpt:
“Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words begins with the significant reminder that Lincoln's most memorable words were not crafted for a marble wall in Washington, D.C., or even for the day's newspapers, but for a living, breathing audience of listeners. Such treasures as the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural were intended for the ear, White says, and one cannot fully appreciate them without reading them aloud or hearing them read. In this well-written book, White also argues that one cannot fully appreciate the import of any of the president's public comments without understanding Lincoln's growth as a speaker and a writer.”
