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By the description, this is a through examination of one particular speech Abraham Lincoln gave at the start of his second career in politics.

That’s actually a very incomplete description. This book is much more about all the history surrounding it.

Lehrman’s contention is that a speech Lincoln gave in October 1854 should be as well remembered as some of his later speeches, like Cooper Union, and the Second Inaugural. That’s not really going to happen, but he does have good things to say about how it is foundational to most anything he said later.

The book is generally at its best recounting the history directly related to Lincoln and his speeches in the 1850s. You get the set up with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and all the political conflict that set in motion. Something Lehrman is quite clear about, but lets get a little overshadowed in other parts of the book is that the speech discussed here was given, apparently in largely the same form, just a few days before in Springfield. His words there were not recorded, and there’s not enough to even begin to reconstruct exactly what he said there, and it’s assumed that Peoria was basically a repeat of it. I’m tempted to think that Springfield may be more of first draft that had been polished afterward at Peoria. But we’ll never know. We do know that Lincoln was directly involved in making sure this version got out for people to read.

And while it’s not as well known, it has been read, and Lehrman leans a lot on existing commentaries on the speech in his book. Enough so that this book is not really able to into a very deep dissection of what Lincoln said, instead presenting more of what others have said. Which is fine enough for me, as that kind of textual analysis beyond my endurance. At the same time the second strength of this book is his look at where the thoughts presented in Peoria would echo in many further statements from Lincoln.

Despite the limited scope, this is not a fine combing over of the subject, and more of a general introduction to it. That is certainly fine for me, and it was a reasonably good read, if tending towards long-form repetition, and ignoring things just outside the spotlight.

Despite the title, this isn’t focused on Radetzky. (But it is a great take off of Johann Strauss’ celebration of the campaign.)

At the start of 1848, revolution swept through Paris—again. And this time, much of the rest of Europe caught revolutionary fever as well. In particular, much of northern Italy went into a ferment that became the First War for Independence, and this book is focused on the military aspects of this.

It really helps if you have some grounding in the period and the Austrian army. There is a small glossary in the back that explains, for instance, that “FML” is “Feldmarshall-Lieutenant”, or Lieutenant General, but in the text it’s never explained, while the abbreviation shows up many times there, and again, the glossary is buried in the back (and there’s a lot for it to be buried beneath). Thankfully, I’ve read enough Napoleonic materials to know this already.

The main part of the book looks as if it should be a detailed, but readable, history of the campaigns of 1848 and 1849, but that’s not really the purpose. There are a decent number of maps, but not enough for some detailed movements over terrain thoroughly unfamiliar to most English-speaking readers. But, this is really a detailed analysis of the campaigns. Not only do we get detailed descriptions of many of the battles and skirmishes (quoting eyewitness accounts where possible), but constant referrals to losses as recorded in unit histories and returns.

So, this is actually a very detailed resource, and if someone wanted to, say, design a wargame on the subject, this would be an excellent one-stop starting point for a design. Added to this detail-oriented history is the fact that there are twenty-one appendixes, mostly giving orders of battle and numbers of troops of various armies at various points.

As a readable history of the First Italian War of Independence, it is lackluster. The writing is not up to helping you juggle all the details that get thrown at you. As an advanced study of a subject already somewhat familiar, I imagine it would do much better. But a more casual reader needs to at least be cautious.