The opening scene of Steven Spielberg’s cinemythic portrait of the sixteenth president features President Abraham Lincoln seated on a stage, half cloaked in darkness, and observing the Union forces he is sending into battle. It’s an apt metaphor for the man himself—both visible and obscure, inside the tempest yet somehow above the fray. Lincoln was […]
Jelani Cobb
Jelani Cobb is the author of "The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress" and the director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut.