Booknotes: Lincoln's Confidant

New Arrival:
• Lincoln's Confidant: The Life of Noah Brooks by Wayne C. Temple, edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (Univ of Ill Press, 2019).

Historian Wayne Calhoun Temple was employed at the Illinois State Archives for over fifty years, retiring in 2016. Over his long writing career, he authored many influential Lincoln-related works and is also considered the leading expert on journalist and Lincoln friend Noah Brooks. His 1956 dissertation on Brooks has just been published "with a few minor changes and corrections" as the fifth volume of a series from the Knox College Lincoln Studies Center (of which editors Wilson and Davis serve as co-directors) under the title Lincoln's Confidant: The Life of Noah Brooks. The series editors believe the over six-decade-old study to still be the most valuable resource for understanding Brooks and the Brooks-Lincoln relationship.

In Lincoln's Confidant, which also includes a brief introduction by preeminent Lincoln biographer Michael Burlingame, Temple "offers the long-awaited first biography of Noah Brooks, the influential Illinois journalist who championed Abraham Lincoln in state politics and became his almost daily companion during the Civil War. 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 still make Brooks a much-quoted source for biographers, historians, and Lincoln aficionados. A grand history and unparalleled scholarly resource, Lincoln's Confidant is the story of an extraordinary friendship by one of the giants of Lincoln scholarship."