Without Him, What Would We Call Lincoln Logs?

Many Americans are getting ready to celebrate what would have been the 200th birthday of the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, born on this day in 1809. Lincoln died April 15, 1865, the first Republican president as well as the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Lincoln was also “the last U.S. chief executive to be elected from Illinois before Barack Obama,” notes J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet.

In addition to all of the published works commemorating this occasion, scholar and author Henry Louis Gates hosts Looking for Lincoln, a two-hour documentary to be shown tonight on PBS-TV. (Gates’ essay about “Honest Abe” was published earlier in The New York Times.) And National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon broadcast an extraordinarily fine essay last week that looks at the Great Emancipator, warts and all.

You can find these links, and a few more, right here. A few weeks ago, we looked at The Lincolns: Portrait of A Marriage by Daniel Mark Epstein. That review is here.

And in one of those odd cosmic coincidences, today is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of British author and naturalist Charles Darwin.