| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. By C. A. Tripp, ed. Lewis Gannett. (New York: Free Press, 2005. xxxviii, 343 pp. $27.00, ISBN 0-7432-6639-0.)
In this widely publicized book, the late C. A. Tripp argues that Abraham Lincoln was "predominantly homosexual" (p. 20) and that his secret sex life contributed to "the qualities of his genius" (p. 214). Despite a bold and occasionally intriguing thesis, this monograph quickly degenerates into an embarrassing mess. The finished product manipulates its rather flimsy evidence, lacks historical context, contains examples of plagiarism, and makes a number of bizarre assertions. One chapter suggests a parlor game, asking readers to "jot down a list, of say, ten names of individuals who are remembered as geniuses" and then to "subtract the names of those persons known to be either homosexual or Jewish or both—and see how many are left" (pp. 209–10). Another passage compares Mary Todd Lincoln to Adolf Hitler. In short, it is not a work of serious scholarship.	1
Early drafts of this book bore the title "Lincoln and Sex." That remains the guiding spirit of the project as it repeatedly attempts to demonstrate that the Great Emancipator had various types of sexual intercourse with men and, conversely, hardly any intercourse of any sort with women. Tripp, a former assistant to the sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey and a psychologist best known for his work The Homosexual Matrix (1975), seems most engaged by the moments when he can educate readers on issues such as the impact of early puberty on sexual orientation or the mechanics of femoral intercourse.	. . .

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