The Gettysburg Address

Description

Perhaps the greatest speech in American history--certainly the best-known--is beautifully typeset, designed and augmented in this slim, affordable volume. Though only 272 words and three minutes in duration when read aloud, Lincoln's legendary speech still resonates as one of the world's great statements of freedom, democracy and human equality, and has long been a cornerstone in the political discourse of tolerance. In this book, the text of the speech is featured alongside Abraham Byers' ambrotype portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1858) and the Gettysburg battlefield glass negative photograph "Harvest of Death" by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, then a 23-year-old field photographer working for the printer Alexander Gardner. Beautifully printed with French folds, this publication includes a letterpress front plate and a colophon insert held in a glassine sleeve. This elegant and simple keepsake will not only revive and repackage one of the most important speeches in American history, but it will also help elucidate the context and unwrap the importance of President Lincoln's words. The book is published just prior to the television premiere of The Address, the long-planned Ken Burns PBS documentary centered on the Greenwood School of Putney, Vermont, where students are encouraged to memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address--a goal that Burns and PBS have challenged Americans, and particularly students, to undertake.