Lincoln, Inc.

From Lincoln-themed cocktails and waffle-parlors to high-tech museums and steamy romance novels, the image of Abraham Lincoln so permeates the national imagination that we now find him in the unlikeliest of places. In Lincoln, Inc., Jackie Hogan examines the uses (and abuses) of the sixteenth president in the United States today. The book takes readers on a journey through the little white lies of Lincoln tourism, and offers a front-row seat as the martyr president is invoked in heated political debates over such issues as homosexuality, abortion, and the war on terror. Readers enter classrooms that use an idealized Honest Abe to Lincolnize American schoolchildren. And readers step into the alternate universe of Lincoln fiction that transforms the Rail Splitter, by turns, into a hapless time-traveler, a sentimental cyborg, an axe-wielding zombie slayer, or a frontier heart-throb.

But Lincoln, Inc. is more than a tour through the thriving Lincoln industry today. Whether in staid biographies, blockbuster films, school pageants, or sleeping pill advertisements, Hogan shows how the use of the Lincoln image reveals the nation's shared fears and fascinations. The book analyzes the ways we employ Lincoln today in our political, ideological, personal, and national struggles; the ways we simultaneously deify and commercially exploit him; the ways he is packaged and sold in the marketplace of American ideas. In learning about Lincoln, Inc., we learn about ourselves, about who we think we are, and who we wish we could be.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 : Lincoln, Inc.: Selling the Sixteenth President
Selling Abraham Lincoln
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln
Chapter 2 : Mr. Lincoln's Coattails: Marketing, Memorabilia and Presidential Tourism
Branding Lincoln
On the Road with Lincoln
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln: Commodification, Simulation and Riding the Rail Splitter's Coattails
Chapter 3 : Packaging the President: Lincoln Biographies
"Among the Noblest of the Nation's Treasures:" Themes in Lincoln Biographies
The Quotes Maketh the Man: Lincoln in His Own Words
Lincoln Lovers and Lincoln Haters: Disputations in Lincoln Biographies
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln: Framing the Sixteenth President
Chapter 4 : Telling Fictions: Lincoln in Literature, Television and Film
From Sentimentality to Sensationalism: The Evolution of the Fictional Lincoln
Lincoln in Biographical Fiction: The Sixteenth President as Boy Scout
Lincoln in Period Suspense: The MacGuffin President
Lincoln in Contemporary Suspense: The Unimpeachable President
Lincoln in Romance Novels: The Pin-up President
Lincoln in Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Great Transmogrifier
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln: Denial, Displacement and Desire in Lincoln Fiction
Chapter 5 : What Would Lincoln Do? The Sixteenth President in Twenty-first Century Politics
In Lincoln We Trust: Lincoln and Legitimacy
The Fight for Lincoln's Soul
Emancipation Proclamations: Homosexuality and Abortion
Whitewashing Lincoln? The Great Emancipator in Racial Politics
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln: Manufacturing Consensus
Chapter 6 : "A" is for Abe: Teaching Lincoln
Lessons in Lincoln
Picturing Abe: Lincoln in Children's Picture Books
Silence is Golden: What Lessons in Lincoln Leave Out
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln: The Lincolnization of American Children
Chapter 7 : Lincoln Under Glass: The Great Emancipator in American Museums
On Curators and Curiosities
Exhibiting Lincoln
What Lies Beneath: Unifying Themes in Lincoln Exhibits
Saint Abe: The Veneration of Lincoln
Consuming Lincoln
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln: Profiting from the Past
Chapter 8 : Selling Lincoln: Who Do We Think We Are?
The Anti-Lincolns
The Barber, the Seamstress and the Abolitionists: African Americans in the Lincoln Narrative
Lessons from the Anti Lincolns: Who Do We (Not) Want to Be?
An Outsider's Perspective on Lincoln: The Sixteenth President in the "Imagined Community"
Coda: In Defense of Lincoln, Inc.