Your friend forever, A. Lincoln The enduring friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed

Strozier (John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY) has written a well-thought-out psychohistorical case study of Lincoln's early years in this in-depth study of the deep friendship between Lincoln and Joshua Speed, Lincoln's closest personal confidant from 1837 to 1842. Although Illinois businessman Speed wrote very little himself, he was a great help to Lincoln in his emotional relationships after the death of Ann Rutledge and Lincoln's romance with Mary Todd. Later, he was significant in keeping Kentucky loyal to the Union during the Civil War. As a historian and psychologist, Strozier is interested in understanding Lincoln and the role of this important friendship in helping Lincoln navigate significant personal crises from depression and thoughts of suicide to Lincoln's political career. The author puts an end to the speculation that Lincoln and Speed had a homosexual relationship. However, their friendship was complex, as seen through Lincoln's personal letters, Speed's Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1896), and the observations of Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, who had a tendency toward exaggeration and bias against Mary Todd. For advanced history and psychology students. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Salvatore Prisco, Stevens Institute of Technology

Historian and psychoanalyst Strozier (history, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice) discovers the character and consequences of Abraham Lincoln's friendships, especially with his longtime confidant and fellow Whig politician Joshua Speed (1814-82). Through a careful, if sometimes imaginative, reading of the Lincoln-Speed correspondence and accounts of Lincoln's friendships by those who knew him, Strozier finds that Speed understood the young Lincoln better than anyone except the president's wife, Mary. By Strozier's reckoning, Speed "saved" Lincoln from suicide by sharing confidences about their mutual concerns and worries about courtship, marriage, and public life-and by giving Lincoln perspective during his darkest days of doubt as a bachelor and rising politician. Strozier points to the emotional intimacy, but not any sexual one, that formed and sustained the Lincoln-Speed friendship and that of many other men in their day. The result is a brilliant, if unverifiable, argument that by wrestling with his early self-doubts Lincoln achieved an emotional and psychological balance that gave him the self-assurance to succeed in politics, public service, and, until war took its toll, in marriage. VERDICT Anyone wanting to know more about the elusive private Lincoln will need to read this book.--Randall M. Miller, St. -Joseph's Univ., -Philadelphia © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.