For Presidents Day, a tower of Lincoln books
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It’s Presidents Day, which through the years has become a celebration of George Washington, whose birthday was Feb. 22, Abraham Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12, and other of our commanders in chief. Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. -- where President Lincoln was shot and which continues to operate as a theater and is a National Historic Site -- is celebrating, bookishly.
Ford’s Theater is opening a new Center for Education and Leadership on Tuesday, but inside today is a 34-foot tower of books. A tower of books about Abraham Lincoln.
That is an awful lot of Lincoln books.
The tower is 8 feet in diameter and is more than three stories tall. There are 7,000 books in the tower, while 15,000 books are said to have been written about Lincoln. ‘It makes a real statement to anyone that this is an important guy and there was a whole lot written about him, and there continues to be a whole lot written about him,’ Paul Tetreault, director of Ford’s Theatre,’ told NPR.
The only bummer about this extravagant display of Lincoln literary love is that it isn’t made of books; the book tower is constructed of aluminum, imprinted with copies of book covers. See photos of the Lincoln book tower at NPR.
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-- Carolyn Kellogg
