Editor's choice: "How Lincoln Learned to Read" by Daniel Wolff

—Elizabeth Taylor, Literary editor

March 28, 2009

Learning is a mysterious miracle, and in this set of interconnected essays, Daniel Wolff tries to illuminate that process by looking deeply into how some iconic Americans—from Abigail Adams and Sojourner Truth to Elvis Presley and Jack Kennedy—metabolized their experiences in and out of the classroom.

"How do we learn what we need to know?" asks Wolff. To answer that question, he delves deeply into the letters, diaries and autobiographies of these wildly different characters, thematically connected as ones who never let school—or lack thereof —get in the way of education.

How Lincoln Learned to Read

Twelve Great Americans and the Educations that Made Them