Thursday, December 15, 2011

Photographer and historian team up to produce a fine new book

Rarely in publishing is there such a perfect collaboration of writer, photographer and publisher as in the new book, Abraham Lincoln Traveled This Way. The lovely landscape photographs by Illinois photographer Robert Shaw are complemented by the narrative of preeminent Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame.

Shaw, from Heyworth, south of Bloomington, wondered some 10 years ago if anyone had done such a project – documenting with photographs locales where Lincoln lived and worked. After learning that no one had, he began photographing various sites in Illinois.

After hearing Burlingame speak about Lincoln several times, Shaw contacted the historian to see if he would collaborate on the project, and the two began their years-long journey, which led them from Illinois to Kentucky and Indiana, and on to Washington, D.C., and the East Coast. Burlingame is, of course, the Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Burlingame was featured in an December 15, 2011, article in the Illinois Times.

Read the story online