Book attacks Abe Lincoln’s detractors

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I first met Pennsylvania-based author Dennis W. Brandt several years ago at the York County Heritage Trust when he was researching the 87th Pennsylvania for his excellent book on the regiment, From Home Guards to Heroes. At the time I was working on what was to become the first edition of Flames Beyond Gettysburg, and Dennis freely exchanged information with me on the role that some of the 87th’s men played in the defense of the Wrightsville trenches and the Columbia Bridge over the Susquehanna River.
Since the publication of the award-winning work on the 87th, Dennis has continued to write, with his second book studying the role of mental health of the soldiers in the Civil War.
His third effort is a totally different theme – a hard-hitting look at efforts over the years (and particularly in the modern times) to associate President Abraham Lincoln with bigotry, failed and self-centered policies, and abuse of government power. These issues came to a head in 2002 with the publication of economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s highly controversial book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and An Unnecessary War.
Brandt, as with many commentators, take exception with DiLorenzo’s modern revisionist themes, which some have criticized as distorting and twisting the primary sources to fit his own agenda and political views. Dennis presents several counterarguments, based upon his own look at the sources, that supports the more traditional positive view of Lincoln’s role in history and his impact on America.
Shattering the Truth: The Slandering of Abraham Lincoln is available at book stores or through on-line retailers such as amazon.com and many others.
The publisher’s promotional blurb states, “Secession is no longer your ancestor’s concept. Demagogues with a yearning to carve the United States into fragments are at work today. Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s prolific work attacking the memory of Abraham Lincoln has made him the titular head of a modern I-hate-America separatist movement. Armed with a long and varied list of sources, this third of Dennis W. Brandt’s books launches a full-frontal assault on DiLorenzo’s lines and point by historical point dissects his Lincolnphobic falsehoods. Readable, factual, and provocative, Brandt conceived Shattering the Truth as a one-stop antidote to those whose path to destroying America begins with slandering Abraham Lincoln.”
Shattering the Truth: The Slandering of Abraham Lincoln
Dennis W. Brandt
Book Surge Publishing, 2009
ISBN 1439229325
434 pages

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