Perhaps the book's most significant contribution is its expression of the centrality of religion to nineteenth-century Americans and the ways religious ideologies and rhetoric played a role in political discourse. For most students, this will be a new idea; and the knowledge that Abraham Lincoln arguably understood that connection better than most politicians and political observers of his era will open up a new dimension of Lincoln's famous words with which most students are already acquainted. As Szasz explains so succinctly, "during the Civil War era, politics, religion, and sacred language overlapped on a variety of fronts" (49).-- Stacy Pratt McDermott, Lincoln in Brief: A Review Essay.