It begins with the search for hallowed ground, the exact place from which                  Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. In bleak November, Kent Gramm                  makes a pilgrimage to the most famous battleground in American history and over the                  course of a month transforms his search into a discovery of the meaning of Lincoln's                  elegy for America's identity.  For Gramm, the century that began                  with Lincoln's address and ended with the assassinations of the 1960s saw the                  destruction of the 'modern' world and with it America's sense of purpose. The book                  reflects on the November anniversaries of public events such as the Armistice that                  ended World War One, Kristallnacht, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the death                  of C. S. Lewis, the first major battle of the Vietnam War, and the publication of                  Robert F. Kennedy's To Seek a Newer World, and also on private events in Gramm's                  family history, provide the occasions for Gramm's meditations on public and private                  heroism, on modernism's hopes and postmodern despair. In November, he asks us to                  seek a path toward the 'new birth of freedom' that Lincoln envisioned at                  Gettysburg."The month begins with things that perish. But                  ultimately, November is a journey of hope, as was Lincoln's journey to Gettysburg.                  So too I will journey to Gettysburg in these pages. Like Lincoln's fellow citizens,                  I go there to assuage personal grief, to find answers; and I hope, for me as for                  them, that my personal sorrows become a vehicle for larger answers and a larger                  purpose. Lincoln addressed their grief, why not mine; he gave his generation                  purpose, why not ours."

November: Lincoln's Elegy at Gettysburg PDF

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