27SU N DAY, NOV E M BER 15, 2009T H E E X A M I N ER
By Richard Pyle
The Associated Press
It's inevitable that a new book
about the election of Abraham
Lincoln in 1860 would seek out
analogies between that remarkable
event and the election of Barack
Obama in 2008.
After all, both were little-known
politiciansfromIllinois,bothsuccess-
ful lawyers, both overcame strong
intraparty challenges to rewrite
U.S. political history, and both did it
in times of national crisis.
Fortunately for readers, author
Bruce Chadwick doesn't overly
dwell on this all-too-obvious theme
in "Lincoln for President."
Chadwick, who lectures on Amer-
ican history at Rutgers University
and is author of nine previous his-
tory books, strives to show Lincoln
was not simply the accidental, aw-
shucks candidate depicted in many
other writings.
The real Lincoln, the author sug-
gests, helped engineer his victory
over three stronger candidates from
the outset, and has been overlooked
or misjudged by most of the writ-
ers who have examined the subject
before.
This Lincoln, says Chadwick, had
long envisioned himself as destined
for high office, campaigned willingly
for others and didn't let defeats dis-
courage his long-range ambitions.
The real Lincoln traveled more
widely than is generally realized in
support of his own cause. On the
same 1859 trip east where he mes-
merized an overflow crowd with his
national political coming-out speech
at New York City's Cooper Union, he
made 12 lesser-known speeches in a
13-day tour of New England.
Formidably opposed for the
Republican nomination by New
York Sen. William Seward, Ohio
Gov. Salmon P. Chase and Missouri
Rep. Edward Bates -- Lincoln was
a canny politician who carefully
nurtured his own image as a man
of the people, cultivated the press
(which he would continue to do in
office), and in the end, outfoxed his
opponents.
The author says that while his
longtime rival Stephen A. Doug-
las and other Democrats treated
slavery as a political issue, Lincoln
"craftily framed all of his anti-slav-
ery arguments -- over a 20 year
period -- within the framework of
morals and religion."
The book suggests again that
there is no bottom to the Lincoln
literary reservoir. The 15-page bib-
liography lists 148 books, along with
more than 100 other sources.
Repetition of material is some-
times annoying, but the author is at
his best when focused on the per-
sonal and colorful details of 1860s
politics.
Book on Lincoln election seeks out Obama ties `The Simpsons'
FOX, 8 p.m.
"The Devil Wears Nada": To raise money for charity, Marge and
the "Philanthro-Chicks" decide to pose for a calendar; after being
loosened up by wine, Marge's pin-up poses are the talk
of the town.
`Desperate Housewives'
ABC, 9 p.m.
"The Coffee Cup": Susan uncov-
ers a surprising connection
between Katherine and Mike;
Gaby tries to get Juanita
into Catholic school;
Lynette's pregnancy
becomes difficult to hide;
Angie learns the truth
about Bree and Orson's
relationship.
NIGHT IN
TOP TV TONIGHT
`Them Crooked
Vultures'
DGC/Interscope
$13.98
Them Crooked Vultures, also
known as Dave Grohl, Joshua
Homme and John Paul Jones,
has released a self-produced,
13-song album of debut mate-
rial. The album features the
studio versions of the mate-
rial the band unveiled at its
August debut at Chicago's
Cabaret Metro.
SOUNDS
`I, Alex Cross'
James Patterson ($27.99)
Detective Alex Cross is pulled
out of a family celebration
and given the awful news that
a beloved relative has been
found brutally murdered.
Alex vows to hunt down the
killer, and soon learns that
she was mixed up in one of
Washington's wildest scenes.
And she was not her killer's
only victim.
EVENING READ
TV
NONFICTION
By Rob Owen
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
For viewers uninterested in "UFO
Hunters," "Gangland" and "Pawn
Stars," TV watchers who long for
the days when History was known
as "the Hitler Channel," your time
has come again.
The network, formerly known
as History Channel (they've now
dropped "Channel" from the net-
work name), returns to its roots with
"World War II in HD," a five-night,
10-hour series (9 p.m. EST Sunday
to Thursday) that chronicles WWII
with little-seen, almost exclusively
color footage that tracks the battles
through the stories of 12 people who
were there.
So how do you make a WWII pro-
gram in HD when the technology to
film in HD didn't exist until decades
after the war?
"The old footage has a lot of clar-
ity to begin with," said Michael
Stiller, an executive producer for
History. "Most of this footage was
16mm shot in color during the war.
We scanned it in frame by frame and
converted it to HD, and it gives you
an image quality that is basically
like the original, whereas if you just
transferred it to video you'd get a
much degraded image."
Gary Sinise ("Forrest Gump,"
"CSI: NY") narrates the program,
which follows a dozen Americans
who served. For the living veterans,
History made an unusual choice:
Their voices segue into the voices
of actors who relate their wartime
experiences.
"One of the goals of `World War
II in HD' was to put people in the
moment of the war," Stiller said.
"We felt the combination of show-
ing the veterans and hearing their
memories, which is very powerful,
but also combining that with actors
who play their younger voices trans-
ported you into that moment. The
actors are channeling the younger
versions of [the veterans]."
Dialogue for the voice actors was
culled from diaries, journals and
sometimes books written by the
vets. In addition, new interviews
were conducted with living veter-
ans that also helped generate some
of that dialogue.
"Whatweneverdoisinventevents
or anything like that," Stiller said.
Some video footage used is "rep-
resentational," meaning that "every
once in a while you're talking about
a naval battle and it might include
one shot of a destroyer sailing along
that didn't take place in that battle,"
Stiller said, noting that historians
looked at footage and advised when
an image did not fit. "It's hyper-accu-
rate. Let's say we're telling the story
of a battle in 1943. We have a team of
historians look at it and they might
say, `You can't use this shot because
he's carrying a rifle that was not
introduced until 1944.' "
"World War II in HD" was two
years in the making, and Stiller said
much of the footage hasn't been seen
publicly in decades, if ever.
History's `WWII in HD' puts viewers on front lines
`Lincoln for President'
By Bruce Chadwick
Sourcebooks Inc.
416 pages
$24.99
AP
Gary Sinise narrates "WWII in HD," which follows a dozen Americans who served.
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