Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, is one of the smartest, funniest writers in the country. His book, Land of Lincoln, was praised by every major newspaper and writers like Doris Kearns Goodwin, Terry Teachout, and Christopher Buckley. But unless I’m mistaken, the book never really shot up the sales charts. The paperback, out now, deserves to move more units.

On the surface, the book is a lark, with Ferguson traveling all over the U.S. to discover the current place of Lincoln (we’re talking Abe, by the way) in the country’s imagination. His itinerary includes a stop -- and this is not a misprint -- at an annual convention of the Association of Lincoln Presenters (they don’t like the word “impersonators”) in Santa Claus, Indiana. But Ferguson’s deep intelligence guaranteed the book would be as insightful as it is comical.

He writes in the preface:

"For a century or more, generations of Americans were taught to be like Lincoln -- forbearing, kind, principled, resolute -- but what we’ve really wanted is for Lincoln to be like us, and this has never been truer than the present day. Lincoln hasn’t been forgotten, but he’s shrunk. From the enormous figure of the past he’s been reduced to a hobbyist’s eccentricity, a charming obsession shared by a self-selected subculture, like quilting or Irish step dancing."