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Abraham Lincoln and China

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Gerat Wall of China, David J. Kent, 2000On January 23, 1864, Lincoln sent to the U.S. Senate papers relative to the modification of our treaty with China. China had been an important, but sometimes difficult, relationship during the Civil War. While he didn’t spend that much time on it, Lincoln did have several interactions and official duties. In this 1864 letter, he writes:

To the Senate of the United States: January 23, 1864

I transmit to the Senate a copy of a dispatch of the 12th. of April, last, addressed by Anson Burlingame, Esquire, the Minister of the United States to China, to the Secretary of State, relative to a modification of the 21st. article of the Treaty between the United States and China of the 18th. of June 1858, a printed copy of which is also herewith transmitted. These papers are submitted to the consideration of the Senate with a view to their advice and consent being given to the modification of the said Twenty-first article as explained in the said dispatch and its accompaniments.

Washington, 23d. January, 1864. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Burlingame had previously notified Lincoln that the existing agreement signed in 1858 needed to be modified “as to permit duties to be paid when goods are re-exported from any one of the free ports of China….” The U.S. Senate consented to the modification in February 1864. Lincoln had reported in his annual addresses to Congress in December 1861, 1862, and 1863 that “very favorable relations also continue to be maintained with Turkey, Morocco, China, and Japan.” However, by 1864, Lincoln was reporting that a rebellion in China was causing some level of concern. “The judicial consular establishment there has become very difficult and onerous, and it will need legislative revision to adapt it to the extension of our commerce, and to the more intimate intercourse which has been instituted with the government and people of that vast empire. China seems to be accepting with hearty good-will the conventional laws which regulate commercial and social intercourse among the western nations.

Burlingame served as Minister to China from 1862 to 1867. He had originally been assigned by Lincoln to Austria but the government there rejected him because of his opinions on Hungary and Sardinia, then at odds with Austria, and so was appointed to China instead.

Back in the 1850s, Burlingame had become embroiled in the infamous caning of Charles Sumner incident. A former Know Nothing, he had joined the newly formed Republican Party along with Lincoln. After South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks brutally beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death, Massachusetts Representative Burlingame delivered his “most celebrated speech,” a scathing denunciation of Brooks, who he denounced as “the vilest sort of coward.” Not surprisingly, the violent Brooks challenged Burlingame to a duel, which Burlingame eagerly accepted. As the challenged party, and an expert marksman, he chose rifles and the Canadian side of Niagara Falls (dueling was illegal in the United States). Brooks chickened out. The non-duel, along with his defense of a fellow Bostonian, greatly raised Burlingame’s stature in the North. Lincoln recognized this and thus sought to appoint him to an important ambassadorship. Hence his move to China.

The last apparent mention of Lincoln’s interactions with China was on February 17, 1865, when he approved an act to authorize the establishment of ocean mail service between the U.S. and China.

[Photo of the Great Wall of China by David J. Kent, December 2000]

Fire of Genius

 

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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The Year in a Traveler’s Life – 2023

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Samarkand, UzbekistanAnother year has passed at the speed of travel, which if my time sense is correct is somewhere between the speed of sound and the speed of light. I’m always shocked to reach December only to wonder what happened to the first eleven months of the year. At least this year, travel-wise, was back to some sense of normality. To quote my old TV psycho-complement, Monk, “Here’s what happened.”

In what seems to have become a trend, my travel year started slowly. January through March are always intensely busy, both with catching up on everything I didn’t finish the previous year and with Abraham Lincoln-related events. This year I was especially busy giving presentations, doing radio and podcast interviews, and fielding questions from reporters related to my book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius. More on that in my annual writing post coming soon. The bottom line is that I didn’t travel much in the first quarter.

All that changed in April as the proverbial (not literal) dam burst. Of the thirty days in April, I was home for only six of them. Early in the month I took a road trip up through New England to investigate many of the stops Lincoln made on his two visits to the region. He had given a dozen lectures in Massachusetts in 1848 between sessions of his single term as a U.S. Congressman, mostly stumping for the Whig nominee for president, Zachary Taylor (Spoiler: Taylor won). Lincoln returned in February of 1860 immediately after his Cooper Union speech in New York City. While originally planned solely to visit his son Robert doing time at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire (after failing his Harvard entrance exams), the success of Cooper Union led to high demand for him to speak in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. I visited many of the sites and conducted research for a future project. I also stopped at Hildene – Robert Lincoln’s home in Vermont – and got a VIP tour, then stopped in Peekskill, NY to keynote an annual meeting and pick up an award.

After two days home, which included a webinar one day and hosting a Lincoln Group dinner meeting the next, I was on a plane to Lisbon, Portugal. We had a few days there before boarding a Windstar luxury yacht to Gibraltar, Morocco, many cities in Spain, Barcelona, and a day trip to Andorra. I wrote a bit more about that trip here. It was May 6th before we got home. June was a busy work month, but it was on the road again for the week of July 4th back to New England for family visits and stops at Chesterwood (the studio of Daniel Chester French, sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial Lincoln), The Mount (the writer Edith Wharton’s home), and the Norman Rockwell Museum (to see his portrait of Lincoln, of course).

September had me back on a plane to “The Stans,” more specifically Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. I met up with a group of people traveling under the Eurocircle moniker, whose leader I had first met a decade ago when my book, Tesla, first came out. This was my fourth trip with her and was happy to see another four people I had met last year on the Tanzania trip. There were eleven of us total who jumped around three major cities in Uzbekistan before spending shorter times in the other three countries. It was an eye-opening experience, as was the single day I had in Istanbul on the way there. [Hint: Turkish Airlines offers free tours if you’re on certain flights with long layovers]

November included the annual Lincoln Forum symposium in Gettysburg, PA, a 3-day collection of a record 350 Lincoln attendees to listen to a collection of some of the greatest Lincoln scholars in the country. Last year (i.e., 2022) I picked up the Wendy Allen Award for the Lincoln Group of DC and gave a presentation on my Fire of Genius book, so this year was slightly less hectic. That said, I did spend time chatting up key leaders of other Lincoln organizations about plans for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. I joined a group of colleagues on the first day out at the Gettysburg National Cemetery examining the camera angles from all the extant photos of the event, including pinpointing the actual location of where Lincoln spoke. That night was headlined by Steve Inskeep of NPR fame. The middle night gave us a concert by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, whose music you would recognize from the Ken Burns mini-series on the Civil War. The final night featured a great rendition of the Gettysburg Address by actor Graham Sibley and a conversation with the incomparable Pulitzer Prize-winning Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals and many others). Two days after returning from Gettysburg, it was on the road again to New England for the third time in 2023, this time for a more relaxed Thanksgiving with family.

Which gets us to December. I do have one more short trip, a few days in Pennsylvania with family, but otherwise the year is done for traveling.

But 2024 is only ten days away. And I have plenty of plans.

Two big trips have already been booked. March will find us on Windstar again, this time on a small sailing ship (140 passengers) in the Caribbean. We’ll start in Panama and spend some time in Colombia before dropping in on the ABC islands, Grenada, the Grenadines, and ending in Barbados. July will find us in Botswana (birding), Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls), and South Africa (Cape Town). After not having been to Africa ever until 2021, this will make the third year in a row seeing a new country (or three) on that continent. The earlier trip to Colombia will be the first time in South America since the amazing Argentina trip of 2014. South America and Antarctica are in future plans starting in 2025.

Of course, there will be “shorter” trips closer to home. I plan another road trip to New England, likely in April, in addition to at least two, and likely three, other trips to various places there in 2023. There will be the Lincoln Forum in November, possibly an upstate New York road trip, a visit to NYC for both work and pleasure, and shorter visits (if I haven’t run out of days in the year) to Richmond and West Virginia. There may be more, or slightly less as circumstances warrant, but it promises to be a very busy travel year.

I’ll have my annual Year in the Writer’s Life post up shortly after Christmas.

Photo: David J. Kent, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Fire of Genius

 

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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A Trek to Burana Tower and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

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One of the stops on my region tour of several Silk Road (aka, “Stan”) countries was the Burana Tower in the Chuy Valley outside of Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan. Less than a two-hour drive from the center of town, with a grand view of the Tien Shan Mountains overlooking the plains, the tower is all that remains of the ancient city of Balasagun, established in the 9th century. The tower is actually a minaret from an ancient mosque.

Or more accurately, part of a minaret. Originally around 150 feet tall, a 15th century earthquake toppled the top half, leaving the current structure at just over 80 feet. Since the remains reflect the wider bottom portion without the visually thinner top portion of most minarets, Burana Tower has a stumpy look to it. Restoration in the 1970s secured the centuries of decay, and now visitors can climb an external metal spiral staircase up to the entrance to an internal winding, dark stairway (not for claustrophobes) up to a view platform on the top. A closer look at the outside shows the intricacies of the design.

The Tower stands alone but is not the only artifact worth the trip out to the site. There are explanatory signs detailing the history of Balasagun leading to a small museum full of remnants from the ancient city. The museum also has a photograph of a model recreating the ancient city. Behind it is a graveyard where you can see the varied gravestones (many are literally carved stones) of centuries of former inhabitants. The seemingly amorphous mound behind the tower is easy to climb and doing so reveals the remnants of the ancient castle. Entering a large yurt gives a sense of how the founding Karakhanids lived.  Overall, it’s an amazing site and well worth the visit.

 

 

If you haven’t already, check out previous posts about the controversial cotton and silk industries of Uzbekistan and the incredible light show in Samarkand.

[Photo Credits: all by David J. Kent, 2023]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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The Controversial Cotton and Silk Industries in Uzbekistan

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Silk needlework in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, 2023It took two or three days into my visit to Uzbekistan for the subject of the controversial cotton growing industry to come up. We also discussed the silk industry that made the country a key stop in the old Silk Road. Uzbekistan is the largest electricity producer in Central Asia, mainly due to the abundant natural gas reserves and huge Soviet-era power-generation plants. They also are the seventh largest global producer of gold, with copper and uranium not far behind. At first glance (and even second glance), Uzbekistan seems too arid to grow cotton. But cotton production is actually one of most important contributors to the Uzbek economy, accounting for about a fifth of its exports.

Decades of Soviet policies to increase cotton production have done severe damage to the Uzbek environment, with agriculture being the main contributor to air and water pollution. Adding in other damaging practices and the growing regional population and industry also contributed to the factors that are shrinking the Aral Sea. Much of the water was, and continues to be, drained for use in irrigating cotton fields. There is also a global concern that Uzbekistan (and others in the region) are using child labor to pick cotton, with the World Bank funding implicated in maintaining the practice. Our guide, when asked for comment, noted that it is the parents who are employed and sometimes children help out because they obviously have to travel with the parents during picking seasons. He insisted that changes have been made to avoid what some activists estimate to be 1.2 million “modern slaves” in Uzbekistan. As always, the reality is more complicated, and it is difficult to get an accurate accounting.

Less controversial is the Uzbek silk industry. The ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarkand were important centers of government and high culture as early as the 5th century BCE, and certainly by the 13th century when Venetian Marco Polo was traveling the area. We got a close up of the silk production process while in Bukhara.

As most people know, silk is a protein fiber produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons, the intermediate stage between caterpillar and moth (although silk can also be produced by some types of bees, flies, beetles, and spiders). The best-known silk comes from the cocoons of the mulberry silkworm (Bombyx mori), which is found naturally on mulberry bushes in Uzbekistan, but usually reared in great quantities in captivity. The unique triangular prism-like structure of the silk fiber is what gives silk its shimmering appearance.

Dyes for silk, Bukhara, Uzbekistan

At one stop in Bukhara, we saw a display of the stages of development of the moth that creates the silk. We also saw how the soft cocoon is spun into a surprisingly coarse flaxen-feeling fiber before further spinning and processing creates a finer thread. Over a hundred mulberry leaves must be eaten by over 3,000 silkworms to produce only 1 kg of silk. The final threads and yarn is incredibly soft and can be dyed into many brilliant colors with dyes derived from a variety of natural vegetation.

We watched one woman doing needlework on a large piece of cotton, painstakingly stitching from one side to another. They also stitch silk on silk, an even more intricate process that takes many hours, days, and even weeks depending on the size of the cloth being embroidered. It was a fascinating process. It was also hard not to purchase something after watching all the work that went into its making, so many in my group (including myself) bought various stitched cloth, scarfs, and more.

One of the benefits of international travel is the opportunity to see local artisans actually making the products. Too often we head to the dollar store to buy something mass produced (often without any human contribution) and don’t appreciate the time and skill that go into hand-made wares. Learning about other cultures is a large part of why I travel, and why we all should travel. As Mark Twain has been reported to say, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness….”

I’m still sorting through my “stan” travel photos, so expect more posts in the future. I’ve already booked a trip to Botswana for next summer and will likely have much more before (and after) then. And there is plenty of Abraham Lincoln in the works, so stay tuned.

[Photo Credits: all by David J. Kent, 2023]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Samarkand, Uzbekistan – The Light Show

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Samarkand, UzbekistanSamarkand was one of the stops on my recent travels to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. [Read more about that here] With over half a million inhabitants, Samarkand is the capital of its region, the second largest city in Uzbekistan, and a center of historical Islamic scholarly study. While the actual date of its founding is a bit fuzzy, most people agree that it came into being during the 7th and 8th centuries BCE, taking full advantage of its location on the Silk Road between China, Persia, and Europe. It was an important city in the Persian Empire, and indeed the primary language is Tajik, a dialect of the Persian language (aka, Farsi). It was from Samarkand that we traveled across the nearby border into Tajikistan.

One of its most notable sites in Samarkand is Registan Square, which means “sandy” or “desert” in Farsi. The square is encased by three madrasahs, or schools, of different periods: the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (1417–1420), the Sher-Dor Madrasah (1619–1636), and the Tilya-Kori Madrasah (1646–1660). Today all three are used for tourism and educational purposes rather than actual schools, and it’s common to see shops and even small bazaars housed in the old buildings, all of which have undergone extensive restoration. The first madrasah (on the left) houses a wonderful museum of the scientific and historical heritage of Uzbekistan and the surrounding regions. I’ll have more on that in a following post. For the current post I wanted to show part of the light show we were lucky to see that evening.

The show traced the long and storied history of the region. The video shows only the first five minutes of what was a more than 20 minute program. There is a narrative that is hard to hear behind the music, but the lights and 3-D video displays are fascinating in themselves.

The Uzbekistan part of the trip started in the capital of Tashkent, went on to Samarkand (with the side trip to Tajikistan), then to the even more ancient city of Bukhara. The three cities were all accessible by a modern bullet train, making travel easy. We then flew from Bukhara back to Tashkent for an overnighter before flying again from Tashkent to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. More on those later.

Visiting parts of the Silk Road (I’ve been to other parts in the past) was a fascinating experience. I also had a quick tour of Istanbul on the way there. It’s nice to be back, but even while still on the trip plans were being made for another long trip next summer that will take me back to Africa (I was in Tanzania last year).

Stay tuned for more!

[Photo Credit: David J. Kent, 2023]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Reflections on a Decade of Writing

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David J Kent at the Lincoln MemorialI double-checked my calendar as I started to write this because the idea of it being a decade into my second career seemed scarcely credible. But yes, ten years have passed since I left my thirty-plus year career in science to pursue a life of writing. It has truly been an amazing experience, and as I said in my first anniversary reflections, it’s still the best decision I ever made.

Not that it has gone exactly as planned. I originally referred to this website and reflections posts as Science Traveler in anticipation of my focus being on traveling and science. I envisioned visiting far off places and writing from a scientific perspective. Those things have certainly remained a part of my life (especially the travel), but I found myself becoming more and more immersed in my second passion – the study of Abraham Lincoln. That shift is reflected in, well, these reflections. After five anniversaries of Reflections of a Science Traveler, I skipped the intervening years and this tenth anniversary reflections is more about my decade of writing. So, what has happened in ten years? Let’s dive in.

The Writing: The book that started it all was about the eccentric electrical engineer and namesake of the electric car company, Nikola Tesla. I had fallen into the topic of Tesla after attending a writer’s conference and participating in what can best be described as speed dating for agents. The book was a huge success, garnering eight printings, translations into four languages, and six figure sales. Released in the summer of 2013, it was also the impetus for me to resign from my scientific consulting job a few months later. I had been thinking about the change for some time, but holding my first book in my hands gave me the confidence to, as the Nike commercials say, Just Do It! So, I did. I then published two e-books over the next two years. The first to expand on one component of Tesla’s life I thought was largely ignored (renewable energy); the second to show the astonishing number of connections between Tesla and Abraham Lincoln. The following year (2016) my book on Thomas Edison came out, sort of a counterpoint to Tesla. And then in 2017 my general biography of Abraham Lincoln was released, which like the other two from Fall River Press was packed with photos, graphics, drawings, and cartoons to capture the eye. That Lincoln book received several award nominations and was named “Best Lincoln Biography for Young People” by Tom Peet and David Keck in their 2021 compendium of Lincoln books.

Following Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, I decided to switch gears again and focus on the book I had always wanted to write. I had proposed a rudimentary concept for the book back in that 2012 speed dating conference, but it saw significant development while I was writing the other books, and a lot more research. By 2020 (aka, the year of the COVID) I was ready to formally propose it to my agent, who placed it with Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Lincoln: The Fire of Genius came out in 2022 and has received significant critical praise and many book award nominations. I’m immensely proud of this book and so happy I was finally able to get it out into the publishing world.

In addition to the books, I wrote a ton of shorter pieces, most of it unpaid. While I did receive payment for some book reviews, most of my reviews have been gratis, including those for the Lincoln Group of DC newsletter, the Lincoln Herald professional journal, and the Abraham Lincoln Bibliography Project website. Then there are several blogs, including my own author website (the one you’re reading now), my “personal side of writing” I call Hot White Snow, some now defunct blogs (no time for them), and the Lincolnian.org website, for which I’ve written nearly half of the 360 blog items published to date. I also squeeze in some random writing to practice my skills and submit to writing contests.

The Traveling: A large factor in the decision to leave my old job was to give me more time to travel. I’ve certainly done that, although the COVID pandemic truncated the decade by about two years. I had been to Asia and Europe prior to my three-year secondment there from 2008-2011, plus a lot more of Europe while there. Since then, I’ve expanded my travels, both around the United States and six of the seven continents. In 2014 I spent three weeks on a road trip through Argentine Patagonia. In 2016 I did both the Caribbean and the Balkans, including a visit to the Royal Palace to meet the Prince and Princess of Serbia. I went to South Korea and China in the spring of 2017, then to Australia and New Zealand that fall. The year 2018 took me to into the Baltic Sea in June, then the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore in December. 2019 was a “C” year, with separate trips to Cuba and Costa Rica, as well as Chicago and Charleston. COVID wiped out 2020 and 2021 was largely empty of travel, although I managed a November off-season retreat to eastern Long Island. Back to real travel started up in 2022 with trips to Iceland and Tanzania (my first time in Africa). I went back to Africa earlier this year, hitting Morocco as well as Portugal, Spain, and even tiny Andorra. Soon I’ll be seeing some Turkey and some “Stans” (more on those in later posts). Overall, my travels have taken me to 67 countries and territories (according to a tracking app called Been) and 42 states (somehow, I’ve missed the middle of the country).

The Reading: Another goal in my new career was to find more time for reading. My job and studies required so much technical reading and writing that I had largely given up reading anything for pleasure. Now I read 75-100+ books a year. Most of that is still nonfiction, but I read a lot more fiction than in the past. The fiction ranges from classics to the hot new releases, with the choice often defined by what shows up in the local mini-libraries. Nonfiction has a lot of science, history, psychology, civil rights, and, of course, a lot of Abraham Lincoln. Which gets me to…

The Lincoln Groups: The same month I took the plunge, and the train to New York, to test the writing conference waters, I joined the Lincoln Group of DC. The group had been around since 1935 but I hadn’t heard of it until I returned from Brussels seeking to explore my other interests. It wasn’t long before I was on the board, then a vice president (the group has three), and for the last 2.5 years, the president. I also ended up on the board of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and I’m now their treasurer. I’m on the board of advisors for the Lincoln Forum, a book reviewer for the Lincoln Herald, and active in the Abraham Lincoln Association and other Lincoln organizations. Over the years I’ve won several awards and recognitions related to Lincoln work, most recently the Wendy Allen Award from the Lincoln Forum as president of the Lincoln Group of DC and the Lincoln Legacy Award from the Lincoln Society of Peekskill. I also was the primary organizer for the big 2022 centennial celebration for the Lincoln Memorial, coordinating with the National Park Service and other groups, plus serving as Master of Ceremonies for the two-hour program on the Memorial steps in the shadow of where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech.

I’m sure there is more. You can also look at the previous five reflections for more insights: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. Or just click here and scroll down to see them all at once.

It’s been a busy, and satisfying, decade. So, what’s the plan for the next ten years? Well, keeping in mind that my “plans” are fluid, changing not quite willy nilly depending on conditions and opportunities, here’s at least an outline of future goals.

Retire: I have no idea what retirement means, so presumably I’ll know it when I see it. That said, I do anticipate some changes.

Future Writing: Perhaps my biggest problem is my inability to focus (which ironically is a subject for a potential future book). I currently have three or four books I’m actively trying to finish, plus I’m working on a proposal for another to have my agent shop around to publishers. Since I can’t seem to focus on one at a time, they all creep along at a snail’s pace and seem never to be completed. My “book ideas” list has reached 51 books, some of which are in progress while others are almost certainly never going to get beyond the brilliant idea stage. To date, all my published books have been biographies. I want that to shift into more creative writing, which will include memoir, travel, history, mixes of memoir/travel/history, and yes, even fiction. These genres scare me. The biographies (which I won’t abandon completely; I have ideas for several) feel like an extension of the scientific writing I did in my past life. Indeed, my first two biographies were of famous scientists. Narrative nonfiction and the various genres of pure fiction are something I’m going to have to work at. And yet, my life has been a series of tangents, the adaptation necessary to remain employed in the uncertain world of regulation-driven consulting. I’ve managed to be successful now in two broad careers, and it feels like a good time to go off on one of those tangents while remaining in the writing sphere.

Future Travel: I’ve been to six of the seven continents, so the obvious step is to get to Antarctica. That’s definitely on my “must” list, as are the Galapagos, Machu Picchu, the pyramids, and a few other places that I’ve somehow managed not to see yet. The goal is to do the must-see places within the next five years. In the short term, I’m scheduled for those previously mentioned “Stans” and have tentative plans for the Caribbean next spring. I also have tentative plans for southern Africa for about a year from now. I also expect to do a series of domestic road trips in the next year or two. Beyond that will depend on some personal factors out of my control. If all the more proximal plans come to fruition, that will mean by the end of next year I will have visited 80 or so countries and territories (territories include places like Bermuda that officially count as a British Island Territory). Maybe I’ll hit 100 someday. On the other hand, there are places I wouldn’t mind going back to and I’ve already tentatively planned on a road trip through the UK, Scotland, and Ireland. And we’ll always have Paris (yeah, cheesy, I know, but I couldn’t resist using the line after having been in Casablanca earlier this year).

Future Reading: This is the easy one. I’ll likely continue to read 75-100 books a year. I’ve broadened my selection considerably over the last decade and expect to continue to do that in the next. As long as it exists, you can always find me on Goodreads as I track my progress. And yes, I do take book suggestions.

Future Lincoln Groups: Here is where the near future might bring the most adjustment. I’ve been in some form of management with the Lincoln Group of DC for virtually all of this decade. I was Vice President of Education and Outreach for not one but two non-consecutive two-year terms, Vice President of Programs for two years, and I’m in my final year in a three-year stint as President. But as onerous as that sounds, I’ve also acted in a kind of shadow capacity for other positions during that time. Interestingly, when I looked back on my first anniversary reflections, I noticed that I was in the final year of the presidential cycle for CPRC (it was my second time as president for this scientific organization, ten years apart) and just beginning my first year officially as vice president on the Lincoln Group board. A decade hence and it’s time for me to recalibrate again. I’ve already informed the board that I will step down at the next election in May 2024, but since I’m still obsessed with Lincoln, I won’t be gone – I’ll serve as Immediate Past-President for whoever takes over the position. Dropping the presidency will give me more time to write for the website and newsletter, plus taken on a much-needed role as historian-at-large as I wade into the Lincoln Group file drawers to collate a history of the group. I’m also thinking of starting a Lincoln podcast. We also have a grant application in the works for a big (big) program, so stay tuned.

Then there are the other groups. My term as treasurer and executive board member of the Abraham Lincoln Institute runs until 2025, although I’m likely to continue indefinitely. My term on the Lincoln Forum Board of Advisors is somewhat open-ended but may be turned over to the incoming Lincoln Group president. I’ll remain active in all Lincoln Groups for the foreseeable future. As my interests evolve, I’m likely to get involved with non-Lincoln groups as well, although I’ll have to be careful not to end up as president (somehow that has happened five times before).

What else? I mentioned above that I’m not sure what “retirement” means, but I’m thinking it starts with offloading some responsibilities so I can focus more on things I enjoy. For ten years I’ve been talking about rekindling my interest in photography, so I consider that being part of it. I also want to travel as much as I can manage. Then there are more entertainment events. More relaxing time instead of hyperventilating myself through the day. More creative writing. Whatever. I’ll know it when I see it, right? All that said, I doubt I’ll ever actually retire, just allow myself to follow those tangents-of-the-moment opportunities when they arrive. I suspect no one will even know when that time comes. I probably won’t know it myself.

On to another decade in the writer’s life.

[Photo Credit: Henry Ballone photo of David J. Kent emceeing the Lincoln Memorial Centennial, May 2022]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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A Controversial Abraham Lincoln Statue – No, Not That One

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Lincoln Trilogy close upAbraham Lincoln is the most memorialized president in American history, in terms of the number of monuments and statues in all fifty states and the U.S. territories. According to the National Monument Audit completed in 2021, there were 193 Lincoln monuments in America, followed by George Washington at 171, Christopher Columbus at 149, and Martin Luther King Jr. with 86. Those numbers keep changing – several new Lincoln statues have gone up in 2023 alone, and statues to Columbus and Confederate General Robet E. Lee are being removed. But Lincoln is likely to continue to have the most statues. That said, not all of them are great. Some of them are downright controversial.

Among the controversial ones are Thomas Ball’s Emancipation Memorial, aka the Freedman’s Memorial, in Lincoln Park, Washington, DC. From its dedication in 1876, its visual depiction of a standing Lincoln and a kneeling African American man beginning to rise from enslavement, the statue has been problematic. A copy of it was removed from its pedestal in Boston during the protests of 2020, while activists attempted to have it taken down in Washington (a bill to have it removed has been introduced by DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton). The fact that it was paid for entirely from funds raised by the formerly enslaved and that Frederick Douglass keynoted the dedication has not kept the discomfort at bay. Meanwhile, the so-called “belly-ache” statue by George Grey Barnard was vehemently attacked by none other than Robert T. Lincoln, the only living son of Lincoln. Robert successfully kept a copy of that statue from being placed in London. The original did get placed in Lytle Park in Cincinnati, with the copy going off to Manchester, England while a copy of Chicago’s Augustus Saint-Gaudens statue is now featured prominently in Parliament Square, London.

Which gets us back to Vermont. Yes, Vermont.

During my recent travels in New England I stopped at Hildene, which I’ll have more about later. Down the road in Bennington, Vermont is the Bennington Museum, in front of which stands a Lincoln grouping called “The Lincoln Trilogy,” although it is also known by a reimagined name, “The American Spirit.” At first glance you can see why the statue is controversial.

Lincoln Trilogy, Bennington Museum, Vermont

Lincoln stands fully clothed, complete with a heavy cape and top hat. Sitting at his feet is a barely covered female figure looking up to him from his waist. He has his hand on her head. His other hand grasps the head of a small boy, unclothed and standing below him. The juxtaposition of the three figures is jarring, at best, even after taking a while to examine it. What could the artist have been thinking?

For one, the artist was not originally thinking the three figures were designed to be placed together.

The standing figure of the boy is called Fils de France, designed independently in 1918 to reflect a young boy gazing intently into the distance symbolizing rebirth of France following the devastation of World War I. The female figure was also produced in 1918 and in response to the War. Called Nirvana, the statue was originally completely nude, the woman’s attitude of tranquility personified the Buddhist concept of nirvana as a spiritual emancipation from passion, hatred, and delusion. Both individual statues are inside the Museum. They follow the stylistic tradition of idealized nude figures developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Lincoln statue provides a stark contrast. One of many Lincoln statues the artist, Clyde du Vernet Hunt, created in his lifetime, it reflects a tribute to Lincoln as an actual historical figure. Hunt revered Lincoln as an idealist, humanitarian, and emancipator, which he tried to capture in the powerfully majestic pose of the statue. Each statue was designed to stand on its own merits and meanings.

Clyde du Vernet Hunt was born in Scotland to American parents traveling in Europe. His grandfather had been a U.S. Congressman and his father served in the adjutant-general’s department during the Civil War. Clyde Hunt studied engineering and art and maintained a studio in Paris and home in Vermont. Hunt was invited to exhibit his work at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1918, a remarkable achievement for an American artist. He submitted his bronze Fils de France (the boy sculpture) and the marble Nirvana (the woman sculpture), both of which received favorable reviews. A decade later, the Societe des Artistes Francais asked him to participate in the exclusive Paris Salon. He created a large plaster group combining the Lincoln statue with the figures of Nirvana and Fils de France. Lincoln and the boy are exact duplicates of the original versions, but Hunt enlarged the female figure of Nirvana and discretely draped the nude female for inclusion in the grouping. [How discrete the draping is a matter of opinion]. Hunt entitled the grouping simply “Lincoln” for the Paris Salon but envisioned it as representing the ideals of Faith (Nirvana), Hope (Fils de France), and Charity (Lincoln, from his “charity for all and malice toward none”). Within this context back in the states, the Fils de France was reinterpreted as “young America.”

The Museum admits that the intellectual concept behind the Lincoln Trilogy was more successful than the visual relationship of the three figures. Even they admit the combination of three distinctly individual sculptures of differing scale and spatial orientation is “somewhat awkward.” After returning to the US in 1938, Hunt cast the trilogy in bronze for display at the New York World’s Fair. Hunt’s heirs presented the bronze trilogy to the Bennington Museum in 1949, where the director of the museum appended the title “The American Spirit” to the statues, an interpretation influenced by the nationalism of the 1940s. So whereas one of the statues depicts a Civil War president, and two of the statues were influenced by World War I, the reinterpretation and retitling came about due to World War II.

Despite the controversy, the statue grouping is worth a visit. The Bennington Museum is a short drive from Robert T. Lincoln’s summer home at Hildene, so definitely put it on your agenda if you’re in the area.

[Photos by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

 

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Abraham Lincoln and the Portrait Painter

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On June 13, 1860, the newly selected Republican nominee for president, Abraham Lincoln fidgeted as he attempted to sit still for a portrait artist. The painting by Thomas Hicks is considered the first portrait oil painting ever of the man who would soon become our sixteenth president. Hicks had come to Springfield to capture the likeness of the rough, western lawyer that would preside over America’s greatest trial. It would be one of many portraits, both in painting and in the still new technology of photography, that Lincoln would sit for in his life.

While he sat, Illinois attorney Orville Hickman Browning “spent a portion of the day with Lincoln talking to him whilst Mr Hicks worked upon his portrait.” Browning recalled, “[Hicks] completed it this P. M. In my judgment it is an exact, life like likeness, and a beautiful work of art. It is deeply imbued with the intellectual and spiritual, and I doubt whether any one ever succeeds in getting a better picture of the man.”

Thomas Hicks was born in Newtown, Pennsylvania, a rural enclave closer to Trenton, New Jersey than it is to Philadelphia. He quickly showed his talent, moving to New York when he was fifteen to study at the National Academy of Design, where his first major painting, “The Death of Abel,” was exhibited in 1841. A few years later he moved to Europe and studied in London, Paris, Florence, and Rome, before returning to New York four years later and beginning a successful career as a portrait painter. He would go on to paint some of the most iconic figures of the period, including Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Cullen Bryant, Margaret Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and perhaps most ironically, Edwin Booth. But his most famous portrait is his painting of Abraham Lincoln.

Made more famous by its wide distribution as an engraving, the original painting is now exhibited at the Chicago Historical Society. I visited there several years ago and took the below photo. Unfortunately, the painting has a glass cover and it’s impossible to get a photograph of it without glare from the exhibit lighting.

 

Hicks became a philanthropist during his highly successful painting career, although he has been largely forgotten since his death in 1890. Mostly this is because his portraiture style had become out-of-date and photography had become so popular that painted portraits were being obsolete, except by the very wealthy.

Lincoln, of course, has been the subject of many paintings, at least 131 photographs of various styles, and hundreds (or thousands) of statues and busts around the world. Hicks may have faded from memory, but his post-nomination portrait helped get Lincoln’s face known to a curious general public ahead of the 1860 election.

[Photo by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Cruising Lisbon to Barcelona, and Everywhere in Between

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A few days ago, I returned from a two-and-a-half-week Windstar cruise-plus trip around the Mediterranean. We started in Lisbon and ended in Barcelona, but made several stops along the way, including Gibraltar, and Morocco. Here are the places we stopped. It was an amazing experience.

Windstar cruise Lisbon to Barcelona

This is our fourth Windstar trip. Previously we sailed in the Caribbean, yachted in the Baltic Sea, and motored from Hong Kong to Singapore via the Philippines, Borneo, and Brunei. We were supposed to be on another trip in the Caribbean to northern South America in December 2019 but it was canceled at the last minute due to mechanical difficulties. Then COVID hit and nothing happened for a while. Last year we were booked for a trip starting and ending in Istanbul that bounced around the Black Sea, including Odessa, Ukraine. Needless to say, the cruise line canceled that trip as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. We ended up in Iceland instead, then a trip to Tanazania near the end of 2022. This was our first Windstar since late 2018 and it was wonderful. The ships carry only about 300 passengers, so unlike the big multi-thousand hotel ships, Windstar gives you the chance to get to know the other passengers and crew.

Looking at the map above you can see there are a lot of markers inland. Obviously, we didn’t sail the ship to Marrakesh, but in retrospect it turned out that we took excursions to other cities at each stop other than Gibraltar. That expanded the cultural immersion immensely.

We arrived in Lisbon, Portugal early on Thursday. The cruise didn’t board until Saturday afternoon so we played tourist in the city, hitting all the hot spots like the castle, the Belem tower, the Monument to the Discoveries, and wandering the neighborhoods. On Friday we took the train out to Sintra. Not only was it the only rainy day during the entire trip, it was a day of deluge. It rained so hard it soaked through my otherwise trusty umbrella and created its own rain on me. Still, it was worth the trip. I had been in Lisbon and Sintra about 15 years ago but hadn’t planned ahead so didn’t even see much other than the famed Oceanario.

The first stop on the ship was Gibraltar and a tour around the “Rock” and its famous apes and St. Michael’s Cave. Then we were off to Casablanca, Morocco. I had always wanted to visit because of the Humphrey Bogart movie, but was told by others that the trip out to Marrakesh was a better use of time. So onto a 12-hour excursion to the city made famous (at least to me) by the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song, “Marrakesh Express.” Long day but worth it.

Then it was back to bounce around Spain. Porting at Cadiz overnight, we spent one day roaming the city and another day going out to Jerez, where we toured a vineyard, wine cellar, and best of all, got to taste two kinds of sherry and a brandy. [Yes, we bought some to take home] Malaga was another overnighter so we walked Picasso’s birth city one day and on the other day took a trip out to Cordoba, home of a huge mosque that was turned into a church (the mosque had been built on a previous church; such back and forth happened a lot as the Muslim Moors and Christians took turns invading each other’s space). Our stop in Cartagena gave us an opportunity to go out to Murcia, heavy in preparations for one of the seemingly ubiquitous music festivals, and still had plenty of time to wander the city of Cartagena itself.

The Windstar cruise ended in Barcelona, Spain. Again, I had been there about 15 years ago but only for a day. This time I was determined to get into the Sagrada Familia (which has grown a lot in 15 years), the Picasso Museum, and spend some time in the Catalonian city of Gaudi. In keeping with the trend of maximizing the opportunities, we took a 3+ hour bus ride from Barcelona to the tiny country of Andorra, deep in the Pyrenees mountains nestled on the border between Spain and France. I’ll write more later, but one thing I noticed is that is that English seemed to disappear as we got into the Catalonia region of Spain. Barcelonians and the greater Catalonians are feverishly protective of their Catalan heritage, going so far as to declare their independence from Spain (which neither Spain nor any other country I’m aware of has conceded to). This was especially true in Andorra where I had to struggle through my rudimentary Spanish and French just to order lunch (the waitress laughed when I asked for an English menu).

Two and half weeks later we’re back in the USA, having visited five countries, thirteen cities, one aquarium, and two or three thousand photo opportunities. It will take a while to sort through the photos, but I’ll be back to flesh out the highlights of key stops.

[Map created by Ru Sun, who in addition to being such a great travel companion, had to survive my temporary insanity in the tower of the Sagrada Familia.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Unexpected Lincoln – Concord, Massachusetts

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Lincoln in Concord MAIt seems Abraham Lincoln is everywhere. Our continuing “unexpected Lincoln” series takes us to Concord, Massachusetts, home of Henry David Thoreau and just steps away from “the shot heard round the world.” I stopped in Concord on a recent road trip to see a special Lincoln Memorial Centennial exhibit at Concord Museum. Not only was Lincoln there, but it turns out Concord was a hotbed of abolitionist fever – and famous thinkers so thick you couldn’t help running into one in the 1840s-50s.

The museum was sponsoring an exhibit called “The Lincoln Memorial Illustrated.” A collaboration by Daniel Chester French’s studio at Chesterwood and the Norman Rockwell Museum in western Massachusetts (which hosted the original installation throughout the summer of 2022); the exhibit is only in Concord until February 26, 2023. As the title suggests, it focused on illustrations, sculpture, archival materials, and ephemera as it traced the Lincoln Memorial’s role as a symbolic site for some of the nation’s most important events and movements. Many of the pieces are political cartoons, often showing how the famed Lincoln statue reacted to key historical events. Included are Bill Mauldin’s depiction of Lincoln crying upon hearing of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, John Darkow’s Lincoln giving a thumbs up to the newly elected President Barack Obama, and Matt Davies’s Lincoln and his chair flipped over backwards in disbelief after the 2016 election results.

Other artwork includes both pen and ink and watercolor depictions of watershed events at the Lincoln Memorial featuring Marian Anderson, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, and the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial itself in 1922. There is also the original oil on canvas painting by Norman Rockwell called “Lincoln for the Defense,” a rare full-length painting of him (and rarer still – in a white suit). Rockwell’s print of Mathew Brady photograph is included, as is a watercolor painting by Anthony Benedetto, better known to most of us as singer Tony Bennett.

I was fascinated by one additional item on display – the account book kept by Daniel Chester French, a detailed record keeper, who recorded his contract payments for the Lincoln Memorial statue ($45,000 increased to $88,400), along with records of payments to the Piccirilli Brothers for marble carving and other work.

Beyond the Lincoln Memorial Illustrated exhibit, the Concord Museum also gave insights into the intellectual community of Concord, which included not only Emerson and Thoreau, but Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. More recently, Doris Kearns Goodwin joined the party. Concord has another claim to fame. While the writers were writing, the women of the town were organizing the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society. Founded in 1837, the Society was hugely influential in New England, hosting abolitionist speakers such as John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglass. Many Concord residents provided housing for fugitive slaves and helped them to continue their travels on the underground railroad. Despite growing up only an hour north of Concord, this is something I hadn’t known before my visit.

 

A bonus – Daniel Chester French not only designed the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, he created the Minuteman statue that sits just of North Bridge. Emerson’s childhood home overlooks the statue and the park. You can almost hear that mighty shot ring out as you soak in American history bridging the beginning of the nation and Lincoln’s saving of the nation.

All photos by David J. Kent

[NOTE: This article originally appeared at Lincolnian.org]

Fire of Genius

 

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.