Endorsements
"Abraham Lincoln's participation in the case of People v. Armstrong has become the stuff of legend. Often studied but rarely understood, the Almanac Trial as it has been presented often obscures more than it reveals about Lincoln as a lawyer. From a sparse official record, a cornucopia of often-unreliable reminiscences, and fictional accounts in print and on screen, George R. Dekle unravels the many strands of fact, fiction, and assumption that form the public memory of this case. Drawing on his experience as both a defense attorney and a prosecutor, Dekle separates reasonably reliable facts from decades of lore that has veiled the case. His careful examination of the evidence in the Armstrong trial sheds new light on Lincoln's role in this most famous of his thousands of cases."—Daniel W. Stowell, Director and Editor of The Papers of Abraham Lincoln
"Dekle provides a unique and fascinating examination of the celebrated Almanac trial. As a retired prosecutor, he utilizes his years of legal experience to weigh the known testimony and evidence, and brilliantly undertakes a cross-examination of the competing historiography of the past 150 years. The reader will be exposed to new insights, and will assuredly be won over to his side. It will forever be very difficult when considering the Almanac Trial to argue against the solid case that Dekle has objectively presented."—Ron J. Keller, Professor of History and Director of the Lincoln Heritage Museum, Lincoln College
"In his latest book, Bob Dekle proves that he is as much a master storyteller as he is a professor and prosecutor. He sets the stage like a movie director, introducing us to the impoverished widow who sells her meager belongings when she hires a young lawyer to defend her accused son. Along the way, Dekle annotates the history-making tale with legal facts and factoids that only a legal insider would know but that a legal outsider can easily understand."—Sharon Packer, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York
"Engrossing. Reads like an engaging mystery. Dekle, through meticulous scholarly research and with a novelist's style, unscrambles the conflicting accounts of Lincoln's famous Almanac murder trial in this endeavor to uncover the true story." —Ronald H. Clark, Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Seattle University School of Law