A funny thing happened on the way to the Lincoln Forum. After a career as a scientist, I became a Lincoln historian. And in a few days I’ll have the chance to join 300 of my colleagues at the annual Abraham Lincoln Forum.
The Lincoln Forum is a national organization for people “who share a deep interest in the life and times of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era.” While my occupation was scientist, my avocation – now my focus – was Abraham Lincoln. From reading Jim Bishop’s The Day Lincoln Was Shot and Carl Sandburg’s Prairie Years and War Years as a boy to collecting various artifacts as a teenager to my 1300-volume book obsession as an adult, I’ve always been a bit of a Lincoln geek. [For the record, that’s a good thing.]
For many years I attended the annual SETAC scientific meeting, which inconveniently put itself on the same week as the Forum. In 2014 SETAC was a week or so earlier, thus allowing me to also go to the Forum for the first time. The same happened in 2015 – after winning a prestigious SETAC award in Salt Lake City I returned in time to attend the 20th Anniversary of the Forum in Gettysburg. Now my focus is completely on the Forum and this year (2019) will be my sixth straight year in attendance. I’ve met a lot of great people each year, including Lincoln reenactor George Buss and a field of scholars led by the incomparable Harold Holzer and Frank Williams.
As the schedule above shows, this year’s Forum should continue to raise the bar on Lincoln scholarship. Among the speakers will be the authors of books I’ve recently read (e.g., Brian Dirck’s The Black Heavens, Sidney Blumenthal’s All The Powers of Earth) or read within the last couple of years (e.g., Anna Holloway and Jonathan White’s Our Little Monitor). Many of the other books to be discussed are on my further list of books to review in my roles as a columnist in The Lincolnian, reviewer for Civil War Times and other magazines, and a member of the book award committee for the Abraham Lincoln Institute.
If you’re going to this year’s Forum, feel free to look for me during meals and happy hours (or just roaming the hallways between sessions). I’m looking forward to catching up with old friends, making new friends, and discussing Lincoln with perhaps the single largest regular gathering of Lincoln scholars and aficionados in the world.
See you at the Forum!
[Photo: Selfie with George Buss/Abraham Lincoln]
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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