Larry Schweikart contributed to this article.

Given Hollywood’s recent love affair with remakes and sequels, new topics and stories should command prime attention. Strangely enough, however, while there have been two updated treatments of the Alamo since John Wayne tackled the subject, and while there have been new approaches taken to important World War II battles such as Iwo Jima and Normandy, Hollywood has by and large shied away from biographies. (The recent John Adams series was a welcome exception). So it is that one of the two or three most important Americans ever, Abraham Lincoln, has received almost no attention from filmmakers over the past decades. 

Perhaps that is about to change with Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming movie on Abraham Lincoln, based largely on author Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. Considered by many modern journalists as one of the best books today on Lincoln and his presidency, it is no great surprise that Team of Rivals should be used as the starting point for the script by Tony Kushner. But whose Lincoln will we see? Will it be Goodwin’s political genius who managed a fractious cabinet that included three individuals, each of whom thought that they had a better claim to the Presidency than Lincoln? Or will it be a liberal reconstruction, such as “Che” or “W.” or Kushner and Spielberg’s own “Munich”? 

Goodwin’s approach focuses on the formative years of three of Lincoln’s cabinet members, William Seward, Salmon Chase and Edward Bates, and spends a significant amount of time developing their characters.  Using diaries and personal papers of Lincoln’s cabinet members, their families, and associates, common in modern social history, Goodwin draws a picture of the times and likely motivations on the central figures.  That’s not to say that Goodwin’s mammoth work (916 pages in paperback) is without its own issues: her vast number of end notes from primary and secondary sources support a narrative that, at times, seems to hurtle from quotation to quotation. Perhaps, though, this is what has attracted Spielberg and Kushner to this particular version of “Honest Abe,” for it provides a perfect basis for a story from a political and seductive point of view.  (more…)

You’ve heard it said before: “The book is better than the movie.” But the movies helped me write my new book, The First Assassin.

The First Assassin is a historical thriller set primarily in Washington, D.C., at the start of the Civil War. Bestselling author Vince Flynn blurbs it on the front cover: “An excellent book–it’s like The Day of the Jackal set in 1861 Washington.”

The Day of the Jackal is a twofer: Both the book (by Frederick Forsyth) and the movie (the 1973 version) are excellent. But the book is still better. It’s super excellent.

Anyway, I started working on The First Assassin in 1996–more than 13 years ago. Yeah, that’s a long time. It was the project I kept setting aside when something more pressing came along, such as the birth of a child or a writing deadline that came with a guaranteed paycheck. (more…)

It’s hard to put into words what my father means to me. He’s old school. So writing some emotional, eloquent, diatribe to his greatness would likely embarrass him more than it would pay tribute. There is an art form to the minimalist compliment among men that I’m still trying to master. My favorite scene in “It’s A Wonderful Life” is when George Bailey sits at the table with his father and can’t put into words how he feels about his old man, “You want a shock, Pop? I think you’re a great guy.”

Part of what I love about my father is how he is a vessel that carries the good things from the past into the future. His generation may have brought some bad things along with them too, but we don’t mourn or fear the passing of bad things. It’s the good things that I fear are leaving us, and our society no longer produces men like Lincoln, Johnny Cash or even my dad. That’s what a father is, a vessel that ushers greatness into the next generation. Dads bring great things from the old school to the new school. (more…)

I have been a proud conservative Republican my entire life. My father and Jimmy Carter saw to that. My first vote ever was for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and I have never voted for a Democrat. Ever. Even today, the reasons for my being so have not changed, despite the media’s and liberal Democrats’ tireless efforts to discredit my belief system. Though the times may change, core principles never do. I have also served this nation proudly in uniform for six years, and don’t regret a minute of it.

In the early 1980s, my military service brought me to some of the darker corners of the world. I spent time in South Korea and Marcos’ Philippines when both countries were under martial law. Knowing I could be shot just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time really woke me up to what exactly it is we have here in America. Seeing a thousand Vietnamese Boat People pulled out of the South China Sea in one day only reinforced my belief in America, Sweet Land of Liberty.

Today, the Party of Lincoln and Reagan appears to be in political disarray, which is why I am writing this OpEd now. Yet many promising developments, along with some huge mistakes by Congress and the Obama Administration, have opened many new doors for us. If only we will enter. (more…)

Gently walking through the hallway, the angular man traded his curiosity about his peculiar situation, (that of being back in his old home), for purpose. The purpose was containment of a problem. The problem was that of a young president gone astray.

The charge of his visit was given to him by Washington, who was not feeling very confident about a recent visit of his own. (See: “The Ghost of George Washington.”)

Mr. Lincoln was never one to forgo the instruction of the Founding Father, as Washington had visited him in spirit, and was always close to his heart in troubled times. So, like a soldier – on he walked.  (more…)