History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But it Often Rhymes

Tags

Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, On Writing

The famous quote in the title is almost universally attributed to Mark Twain. It’s often said that history repeats itself. Twain supposedly took a different tack, suggesting that while it doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes.

As with many famous quotes, the person being quoted likely didn’t say it. Twain (nee Samuel Clemens) died in 1910 and apparently the first time he got credit for the saying was sixty years later, in 1970. That doesn’t mean he didn’t say something like it. Indeed, in the 1874 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, co-written with his neighbor, he did begin a more flowery sentence with a variation of the first clause: “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”

It’s a good saying no matter who originated it. Essentially it suggests that events may not occur again in exactly the same way but there often are enough similarities to make it seem like a spot of deja vu. In a practical sense, studying history can give us insights into present and potential future outcomes.

This idea has popped up a lot in recent years among Abraham Lincoln and 19th-Century historians. The antebellum era of white supremacy being used as a tool by a small number of super-wealthy aristocrats in the South to manipulate the working classes is eerily familiar today. Texas and others have again started chattering about secession. A small number of people holding massive amounts of populist power have again begun to delegitimize political and social institutions because, and here’s the rhyming, those same people realize they have lost control of the federal government. Just as slaveholding plantation owners who had controlled the federal government since its inception realized they were losing that control decided to split the country to create a subsidiary that they could continue to control, we now see a minority harkening back to the 1800s seeking to manipulate the institutions to serve themselves rather than the public at large.

I Googled Abraham Lincoln news on Monday just prior to a bimonthly editorial meeting searching for stories we can highlight on the Lincolnian website. Not surprisingly, there were dozens of stories about the assassination (Lincoln was shot the night of April 14th and died the next morning). Among them was a video of presidential historian (and buddy of both Bushes and Biden) Jon Meacham referring to Lincoln’s speech most often referred to as the Lyceum Address. The actual title was “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” In it he decries mob rule and the use of violence and intimidation to get what you can’t get in the voting booth. He also notes that the United States could not be overtaken by foreign adversaries, but rather from within:

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

Lincoln was warning that the greatest danger to America would rise from within. Meacham reminded us that the rise of a tyrant could happen today. In fact, he noted emphatically, that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in at this moment. Virtually every historian of the antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras sees the rhyming taking place as we speak. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? Lincoln asked. Meacham and historians answer: The danger has arrived.

There is another, much less serious, historical rhyme. Last April I conducted a road trip to several New England states as part of research for a work in progress. I hopped on a sailing cruise immediately after my return. This April I flipped the rhyme – a different sailing cruise came first, followed by another New England road trip to collect more information. In between I hosted a Lincoln Group event featuring a semi-famous speaker in the Lincoln field.

Mark Twain may have been right. Adding humor to insight. He must be quite bright.

I have a ton of things going on right now in the Lincoln and travel worlds, hence the gap since my last post. Some big news should be on the horizon, so check back soon.

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius is available for purchase at all bookseller outlets. Limited signed copies are available here. The book is 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. If you read the book, please leave a review and/or rating.

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.

Win a Free Signed Copy of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius!

Tags

Abraham Lincoln, books, giveaway, giveaways, Goodreads, Goodreads., writing

You can win one of five free signed copies of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius on Goodreads.

Click here to Enter Giveaway!

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius is available for purchase at all bookseller outlets. Limited signed copies are available here. The book is 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. If you read the book, please leave a review and/or rating.

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.

The Myriad Muddles of Dr. Mudd (and Roger Mudd Too)

Tags

memoir, Mudd

His Name is Still Mudd is the name of a book by a friend and colleague of mine named Ed Steers. Steers is one of the foremost experts on Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and adept at tracing the muddled messes of history. But even Ed probably couldn’t track the messes of Mudds coursing through Lincoln – and my own – histories.

Let’s start with the easy part. You’ve probably heard about Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, the physician who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Mudd (i.e., Samuel) was born in Charles County, Maryland, the fourth of ten children. He later married his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Frances Dyer (whom he called “Frank”) and settled into a 218-acre plantation called St. Catharine, a wedding gift from his father carved off from the main plantation. Samuel was both a country doctor and a gentleman farmer, although the eleven people he enslaved did most of the actual work. Mudd was thirty-one years old and the father of four children when Booth and David Herold came knocking on their door at about 4 a.m. Saturday morning, April 15, 1865.

Mudd did himself no favors by lying to authorities, claiming he didn’t know Booth and merely did what any country doctor would do when an injured stranger showed up at his door. Ed Steers makes the definitive case in his book that Mudd did, in fact, know Booth, and while he likely wasn’t aware of the assassination plans, he certainly aided and abetted Booth’s escape. Long story short, Mudd was convicted with other conspirators and sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas (to get there, drive all the way to the end of the Florida Keys, then take a plane or boat out to the island where the fort/prison is located). You can read about the place here. Mudd was eventually pardoned by Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, after working to save lives during a yellow fever epidemic on the island.

This is where it starts to get weird. On April 14th, just hours before heading to his fateful date at Ford’s Theatre, Abraham and Mary Lincoln visited the Washington Navy Yard and toured the ironclad Montauk. Days later the Montauk would be the temporary prison for six of the accused assassin’s co-conspirators. Doctor Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt missed the boat, but 12-days later the body of John Wilkes Booth, who Mudd had aided, was brought back to the Navy Yard and onto the deck of the Montauk for examination and autopsy.

Dr. Mudd’s grandson, Richard Mudd, who received bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D., and medical degrees at Georgetown University before serving as an occupational physician for many years, spent much of the 20th century trying to clear his grandfather’s name before finally passing away in 2002 at the age of 101. Among his many attempts included writing to Presidents Carter and Reagan in turn, begging each to pardon Dr. Mudd. [The title of Ed Steers’s book, His Name is Still Mudd, reflects the historical outcome.] Both Carter and Reagan seemed to buy into Richard Mudd’s persuasion (ignoring evidence to the contrary) and wrote open letters expressing their faith in Dr. Mudd’s innocence (which Steers categorically kiboshes). Carter wrote that he hoped to “restore dignity to your grandfather’s name and clear the Mudd family name of any negative connotation or implied lack of honor.” Reagan reiterated the theme, writing “I came to believe as you do that Dr. Samuel Mudd was indeed innocent of any wrongdoing.” That said, both presidents did what politicians are wont to do, which is, nothing. They concurred, or more accurately, their legal advisers concurred, that the full presidential pardon of Mudd by Andrew Johnson in 1869 had already done the job and there was nothing more they could do.

There is another odd connection between the Lincolns and the Mudds. Lincoln’s father Thomas was saved from kidnapping and likely death when he was eight years old by his older brother Mordecai. Their father (i.e., Lincoln’s grandfather, also named Abraham) had just been killed by a Native American, who was subsequently shot to death by fifteen-year-old Mordecai. As the oldest son, Mordecai inherited all the Lincoln property when he came of age a few years later. Now much wealthier, Mordecai built a larger house down the road from the family homestead and got married. And here is where the story gets even stranger. Mordecai gained even more pedigree by marrying Mary Mudd from one of the “first families” of Washington County, Kentucky. And yes, Mary Mudd is a distant cousin to Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. You can read more about the family homestead here.

Which gets me to newsman Roger Mudd. Mudd (Roger) is descended from a different branch of the same tree that produced Dr. Samuel Mudd. Roger Mudd is, or at least was, a well-known and highly respected journalist from a long, long time ago when such a thing was actually the norm. Roger was born in Washington, DC and made a local name for himself in Richmond, Virginia before gaining national fame reporting and anchoring for CBS News and NBC News and The History Channel. He lived for many years in Mclean, Virginia.

Which is how I met Mudd.

The short version of the story is that the scientific consulting firm that I worked in Washington, DC was owned by a law firm. Our main liaison was a managing partner of the law firm, who unexpectedly, and quite suddenly, passed away in his 70s from a massive pulmonary embolism. At his funeral service, held in St. Albans on the grounds of the National Cathedral, I gave my condolences to his wife and found myself chatting with this tall, distinguished man that I recognized immediately. It was Roger Mudd.

Mainly we talked about how we knew the deceased. It turns out my old colleague had been Roger Mudd’s neighbor in Mclean. They were good friends and card-playing buddies living in big houses in the ritzy part of the DC suburbs while I was just a young science guy still getting my feet wet in Washington. The conversation didn’t last long, but long enough to impress my newsmonger father when I told him about it. I don’t recall if I had made the Lincoln connection of Roger Mudd to Dr. Mudd at the time, but it was nice to meet someone of that stature. I’ve been lucky over the years to meet some “royalty” in both my science and historian careers, including some actual royalty, and he turned out to be a delightful guy.

Roger Mudd would live many more years, passing away at the age of 93 only in 2021.

[Photos of Dr. Samuel Mudd and Roger Mudd]

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius is available for purchase at all bookseller outlets. Limited signed copies are available here. The book is 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. If you read the book, please leave a review and/or rating.

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.

BICHOK or Life? A Writer’s Paradox

Tags

books, memoir, nonfiction, On Writing, writing

Stephen King famously wrote in his advice/memoir book, On Writing, that he diligently writes 2,000 words a day, every day. After pumping out that ton of verbiage, he is free to do other things. Sometimes it takes a couple of hours, sometimes fifteen. Those who follow him know he is prolific, putting out a lot of books in both number and word count. He also hates adverbs, but that is a topic for another time. King’s counsel to write daily dovetails well with another ancient bit of writing advice I recently revisited in an article by Sarah Chauncey on the Jane Friedman blog – BICHOK.

For those who don’t know, BICHOK is the acronym for “Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard.” To be a writer, you have to write. That means actually typing words – a lot of words – into a computer, laptop, manual typewriter, or whatever (for the sake of argument, we’ll assume handwriting on a lined yellow pad of paper counts as typing). Other authors offer similar writing advice as King, such as Anne Lamott’s (Bird by Bird) “sh*tty first draft.” You can fix it later, but only if there is something there to fix. You get the drift.

Chauncey’s article focuses on the idea of taking daydreaming breaks and “looking away” as a means to allow your subconscious mind to achieve creative flow. She gives some examples, such as meditating, taking a walk in nature, dozing off for a short nap, or stepping into the shower (something about the flow of water). These bits of non-writing time free the mind enough that your BICHOK time is productive.

But as I read her article, my mind daydreamed beyond “a walk in nature” all the way to “a walk in Barcelona” or “poling a skiff across the Okavango Delta in Botswana.” I dreamt of travel. I dreamt of living life. And here is where the writer’s paradox gets sticky.

Another tidbit of writing advice usually attributed to Benjamin Frankin is:

If you would be remembered, write a book worth the reading or live a life worth the writing about.

That quote stimulated a few grey cells. Years ago, a colleague in my science career asked me point blank: “When are you going to start living your life.” My initial reaction was to get defensive, after all, wasn’t I living my life every day? I later realized my life at that time primarily revolved around career interactions. Perhaps seeing more of the world might indeed be in order. With that in mind (and now being less financially constrained), I started traveling overseas for pleasure, having previously been limited mostly to domestic travel associated with work assignments or scientific conferences. A short stint residing in Scotland followed by living in Belgium for three years, both work-related, gave me the opportunity to see more of the world in my free time. Having essentially not traveled before my colleague’s rather abrupt question, years later I have managed to visit over 70 countries and territories. I expect to tack on another ten or so this year based on trips already booked. I found I liked experiencing more of the world.

I feel like I have started to live a life worth writing about. Now I need to actually write it.

Then there is the Abraham Lincoln side of me. I had always been enamored of Lincoln even while pursuing my science career. About a decade ago I made the radical decision to give up a consistent salary to pursue Lincoln studies and the aforementioned travel. Despite the 16,000 or so books about Lincoln already out there and a dozen new ones every year, there is still a lot to write about. And that I have done. I also wrote books on scientists like Tesla and Edison, but other than blogs, not so much on the travel.

This is where BICHOK comes in.

I am easily distracted. The creation of the internet exacerbated that natural tendency (thanks, Al Gore). The concept of BICHOK is a challenge, especially when combined with the common writer’s advice to “write every day.” I’m not even talking about the Stephen King “2,000 words a day before doing anything else” every day, just the “write anything” every day, day. Toss in the traveling, the Lincoln pursuits, and the seemingly unending other obligations and the challenge is real, folks.

Still, the BICHOK advice is the reality as well. If you don’t write, you can’t edit it into something worth reading.

I am writing this on a Friday night. I actually started it on Wednesday night. Thursday was a blur of distraction that did not include this piece. It is now Saturday and I’m doing some final editing in between reading an Amici Curiae brief related to the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause and reading a book chapter about lions in Tanzania (and a dozen other things). I will definitely publish this piece today. Or maybe Sunday. That is often how I write – start, drift off into thirty other projects, and eventually come back to the work(s) in progress and maybe finish one or five of them. Starting up again each time is, well, let’s say, not the most efficient way to write. But it is what it is.

King won’t see me tap out 2,000 words daily, although in the unlikely (and creepy) event that he were to eavesdrop on me, he might see 4,000 words one day and 0 the next, although not necessarily on the same WIP. That isn’t likely to change. But I do think I can manage the combined “BICHOK” and “write every day” concepts.

And it worked. This piece is finished tonight (now tomorrow).

Edited tomorrow (now today).

Published with a day to spare.

Life continues.

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius is available for purchase at all bookseller outlets. Limited signed copies are available here. The book is 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. If you read the book, please leave a review and/or rating.

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.

Reading Time – 2023

Tags

books, memoir, On Writing

Another year has zipped by, which means it’s time to recap my year in reading as tracked on Goodreads. You can also check out my author website for “the year in…” posts on Writing, Traveling, and Lincoln Book Acquisitions.

As with 2022, I surpassed my goal of 75 books a year to reach a total of 90 books read in 2023. I set the goal knowing that I would likely pass it; 75 seems to be a good number to keep the goal challenging but not give me an added excuse to avoid writing.

About 36% of the books I read were fiction – a total of 32. As with recent years, my fiction selections are a mix of books I’ve selected based on them being distinguished in some way (classic, virality, great reviews) or simply being available in the three mini-libraries I frequent (now that Starbucks has added a mini-library basket). I also will read books that have been recommended by friends. While most of the mini-library books tend to be what I call “fluff” (i.e., not particularly brain taxing and easily forgotten even if I enjoyed them), most of the self-selected or recommended ones, which I usually pick up at the actual library, have been good to great. Among the best fiction I read this year were Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara, To the Edge of the World by Harry Thompson, and my favorite, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. I also enjoyed One Must Tell the Bees by J. Lawrence Matthews, which merges Abraham Lincoln and Sherlock Holmes. The premise sounds a bit far-fetched, but the book works.

I even read two plays! The first was Tesla by Sheri Graubert, the full text of the off-Broadway play I had advised back in 2013. The second was a classic play by Berthold Brecht called The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

And then there was the nonfiction, which still makes up over 64% of my annual reading. Books about Lincoln led the pack on any given topic (shocker!), with 18 Lincoln books among the 54 nonfiction books I read over the past twelve months. That’s less than last year, which was less than the year before, in part because I am no longer on the ALI book award review committee (although I did receive books to read from other sources). Lincoln books I liked this past year included several that relate to my ongoing research, plus Steve Inskeep’s Differ We Must (how Lincoln dealt with people with whom he disagreed), Jason Emerson’s Giant in the Shadows (the best book on Robert Lincoln in existence), Craig Symonds’s Lincoln and His Admirals (Lincoln’s relationship with his navy, from admirals and other commanders to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles), and Allen Guelzo’s classic book, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President. Not only did I read the last two (Symonds and Guelzo), I joined monthly discussions of each with the Lincoln Group of DC. Another book I read that I considered just okay was Lincoln’s God by Joshua Zeitz, which took a crack at the difficult topic of defining Lincoln’s religious beliefs (if any). Some historians gave it bad reviews; I thought it better than most but didn’t think Zeitz came close to answering the question the book implied it would answer. Guelzo’s much earlier Redeemer President book actually does a much better job, although it too has no definitive answer.

There were also about eight books that I count as “Lincoln (small part)” because they relate to Lincoln in some major way. For example, The Caning by Stephen Puleo is about the infamous 1856 attack on Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate by South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks, which was one of the major incidents leading to the Civil War. Defeating Slavery and Hamilton Versus Wall Street, both by Nancy Spannaus, dig into Hamilton’s “American System,” which Lincoln pushed as a Whig legislator and congressman. Complicity by Anne Farrow et al. looks at New England’s early role in expanding the international slave trade and how the textile industry relied on Southern cotton, all of which helped lead to eventual Civil War. I also read On Freedom Road by David Goodrich, which catalogs the author’s bicycle treks following the Underground Railroad and Lincoln’s New Orleans visits. No Common Ground by Karen Cox examined Confederate monuments and the ongoing fight for racial justice. All of these touched on topics related to Lincoln.

While books on Lincoln still dominate, 2023 saw me read more about other parts of American history. The Revolutionary war and George Washington as president seemed to get a lot of attention. There was Revolutionary Roads by Bob Thompson, which toured major sites related to the Revolutionary War. Travels with George by Nathaniel Philbrick traced Washington’s presidential tours to New England and the South as he tried to bring the nascent country together as a nation. The Whiskey Rebellion by Brady Crytzer combined exemplary research with horribly cliched writing to dig into an important but rarely discussed western Pennsylvania uprising early in Washington’s presidency. And there was David Waldstreicher’s The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, the Revolutionary era enslaved African American woman who became a celebrated poetess. Non-Washington books included C.W. Goodwin’s biography, President Garfield, Jonathan Eig’s MLK biography, King, Jules Witcover’s The American Vice President, Jason Steinhauer’s History Disrupted (about how social media and the web have changed our understanding [or misunderstanding] of the past), and Edward Larson’s American Inheritance (slavery at the time of our nation’s founding). I even tossed in a convoluted biography of Dante by Alessandro Barbero.

Science got some reading time as well. Ed Yong’s An Immense World (about animal senses) was a huge best seller and a good read. Katie Spalding’s Edison’s Ghosts was a humorous look at some of the major failings of famous scientists. Rebecca Solnit took on Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, who turns out not only to have developed the first motion photography (remember the running horse sequence?) but influenced people like Thomas Edison. Appropriately enough, I read a few books on distraction in 2023, as well as an account of the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit on The Lazzaroni (which, I’m sure everyone will remember, I mentioned in Lincoln: The Fire of Genius).

By far the most important book I read in 2023 was Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson, which I described in part by saying:

“Democracy Awakening displays the depth of Richardson’s command of American history as well as the clear, concise writing style that has made her daily letters so appealing. Everyone should read this book, including those – especially those – who might find her words startling.”

If you haven’t read it, you should. You can read my full review of the book on Goodreads.

Of course, I haven’t mentioned all of the 90 books I read in 2023 above. You can see the full list of books by following my Goodreads site.

So, it’s time to decide what my reading goal will be for 2024. I’m working on a book proposal that I hope to contract in the first half of the year, plus have some other book projects in the works, which probably means I should cut back on my reading goal. But I know it won’t happen. Needing a goal that I can work toward while still leaving time for travel and writing, I’ll keep my reading goal for 2024 at 75 books. We’ll see where I am at the end of the year, but it should be doable. Ideally, I’ll pass 75 AND have a book to the publisher AND have traveled to at least 10 new countries and territories AND expanded my horizons in other ways. If you haven’t already, check out my end of the year posts on writing, travel, and Lincoln book acquisitions from 2023.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year and Happy Reading!

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius is available for purchase at all bookseller outlets. Limited signed copies are available here. The book is 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. If you read the book, please leave a review and/or rating.

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.

A Writer’s Passing

Tags

Abraham Lincoln

A writer I knew recently passed away. This has become all too common because of my association with the Lincoln Group of DC. As with many such interest groups, the membership tends to skew older, usually making me among the youngest in the room. With age comes experience, and many of the longer-term members offered up their guidance and their mentorship. In the last few years there have been several members who have passed away. Elizabeth Smith Brownstein was the latest.

While most of the membership consists of people with a general interest in Abraham Lincoln but without a specific academic training in his life and time, there are many who are true scholars. Some have doctorates in various non-Lincoln fields but have spent considerable time learning about Lincoln. Some are former professors. Many are writers, either about Lincoln or about their career field of study. John Elliff had written books on government. Paul Pascal had written legal briefs and books. Buzz Carnahan had two highly regarded books on Lincoln and the rule of law. Elizabeth was best known for two books. If This House Could Talk, looked at the history of the United States through the architecture of twenty-seven homes. Her second book, Lincoln’s Other White House, dug into the newly renovated summer retreat at the Old Soldiers’ Home, now restored as President Lincoln’s Cottage. The previously unknown stories helped bring insight into Lincoln’s decision making. Each book showed her skill as a writer and a presenter.

I met Elizabeth early on in my tenure with the Lincoln Group of DC, and from the start she was extremely supportive. She saw me as a future leader of the group when most barely noticed me. We signed each other’s books and had many discussions about Lincoln and life.

And what a life she had. Elizabeth spent much of her career as a writer and producer in the nascent television industry. She worked at CBS with such luminaries as Edward R. Murrow, Lawrence Spivak, Eric Sevareid, Martin Agronsky, and others. Later, she was Director of Research for the Smithsonian World television series hosted by David McCullough, a program that won forty awards in its first three years alone.

But my fondest personal memory with Elizabeth was her recounting of when she met Katharine Hepburn. I had been a huge fan of Hepburn much of my life, even once getting a response to a letter I wrote her. I collected and watched all her movies, with the Desk Set, in which she starred with Spencer Tracy, being one of my favorites. The movie pitted a television research department against EMERAC, a huge mainframe computer that threatened to put the department out of business. The main character played by Hepburn is based on the head librarian at CBS, who retired about a year before the film was released in 1957. It was Elizabeth Brownstein with whom Hepburn consulted as she prepared for her role as Bunny Watson. It was a fascinating connection.

Elizabeth and I had other commonalities as well. She was born in Massachusetts and spent summers on Cape Cod. She loved classical music, as did I, and was an accomplished pianist, which I wasn’t but do appreciate immensely. Elizabeth often presented a program where on the piano she played the music Lincoln had loved. She also loved to travel, having visited most of the United States as well as Europe and Africa. I had the privilege of sharing the stage with her on C-SPAN as we discussed our books.

A few years ago, Elizabeth moved from Washington, DC to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to be nearer her family, who would assist her as age started catching up to her active lifestyle. It was there that she passed away earlier this month, peacefully, with her family close by.

She will be missed by me, by the Lincoln Group of DC, and by everyone who knew her.