The Day Lincoln Lost by Charles Rosenberg – Blog Tour (Review)

I started this book with a completely different expectation from what I ended up getting and I am totally okay with that. This could not have been a timelier, or more fascinating, read.

Set against the backdrop of the run-up to the pivotal 1860 election, the author tackles just about every topic at issue. From slavery and abolition to the scorn of media against certain politicians, all is covered with accurate and informative detail.

I particularly liked the way the author mixed real historical figures with his fictional characters. I have studied the Civil War at great length and am familiar with several of the names mentioned in this book.

But the author wrote his fictional characters so vividly, that I found myself Googling just about every one of them to find out if the person was imaginary or was real and I just hadn’t heard of them. It made the book almost interactive, which I really enjoyed.

(Yes, I realize I could have just read the end notes, but where is the fun in that?)

I also liked how the author used an escaped slave girl to set the scene and allowed the characters’ positions to be clear through their actions instead of just through exposition. I think that this helped the story come more to life.

What I didn’t like, and I’m not exactly sure of why the author chose this path, was to change something that seems rather insignificant in the bigger picture. It has to do with the election itself, and that’s all I am going to say in terms of the overall plot.

What occurred to me, however, is that the author might have been using one of the most contentious elections in American History as a commentary for our current election. I’m not sure if that was intentional or not, but to me there were clear parallels that could have been drawn.

I found myself saying, “well that sounds familiar” more than a few times. This was especially true when it came to Buchanan’s attitudes (and those of the people surrounding him) towards Lincoln. The similarities to the past few years of history were too great to ignore.

I think that when it comes to alternate history, it’s important to go big and show how different history could have been. I didn’t get that with this one. But I still enjoyed it because of the characters and the closer look at another time that our country was in crisis.

About the Author:

Charles Rosenberg is the author of the legal thriller Death on a High Floor and its sequels. The credited legal consultant to the TV shows LA Law, Boston Legal, The Practice, and The Paper Chase, he was also one of two on-air legal analysts for E! Television’s coverage of the O.J. Simpson criminal and civil trials. He teaches as an adjunct law professor at Loyola Law School and has also taught at UCLA, Pepperdine and Southwestern law schools. He practices law in the Los Angeles area.