This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I’m highlighting one of my new go-to nonfiction duos Dan Abrams and David Fisher. Dan Abrams is probably best known as the Chief Legal Affairs Anchor for ABC News and over the last thirty years, David Fisher has authored or co-authored over 80 books with a quarter of them having been New York Times Bestsellers. Together they make for one dynamic writing duo.
Lincoln’s Last Trial: The Murder Case that Propelled Him to the Presidency was the first book they wrote together. Part true crime and part biography, this book is a gripping account of the last murder trial Abraham Lincoln worked—a case in which he had a deep personal involvement—and which played out in the nation’s newspapers. I’ll admit, part of what first drew me in to pick up the book in the first place was I didn’t know that Abraham Lincoln was the defense lawyer in a notorious murder cast on the eve of his presidency. Sure, I knew about Lincoln as a President and that he was a self-taught lawyer from Illinois, but I had no idea the intense events in the months preceding his Presidency.
In their thrilling follow-up to Lincoln’s Last Trial, Abrams and Fisher decided to tackle Teddy Roosevelt’s last epic courtroom battle, the battle in which he turned on former allies to challenge corruption in the political party that made him. In Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy, Abrams and Fisher used accounts from inside and outside the courtroom in combination with excerpts from the trial transcript to give the reader Roosevelt in his own words, which serves as the heart of this book.
I’m pretty picky when it comes to my history nonfiction reading and Dan Abrams and David Fisher books fit the bill. If you like courtroom dramas, presidential history, and true crime, you won’t be disappointed by their books.
Check out Lincoln’s Last Trial and Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense at the Sioux City Public Library.
Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Avery Brothers.
