Author Jackie Hogan explores why Abraham Lincoln permeates the national imagination in “Selling Abraham Lincoln” on Sunday, February 12 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. at Peoria Public Library North Branch. Hogan, Chair of Sociology at Bradley University, explores the topic in her latest book, Lincoln, Inc. Copies will be available for sale and signing after the discussion to benefit the Friends of Peoria Public Library.

From Lincoln-themed cocktails and waffle parlors to high-tech museums and steamy romance novels, the image of Abraham Lincoln can now be found in the unlikeliest of places. In Lincoln, Inc. Jackie Hogan examines the uses and abuses of the sixteenth President in our country today. The book considers the place of Honest Abe in America’s classrooms, historic sites, blockbuster films, advertisements and heated debates about issues such as abortion, homosexuality and the war on terror. But Lincoln, Inc. is more than a tour through the thriving “Lincoln industry” today. It analyzes the ways we employ Lincoln in our political, idealogical, personal and national struggles; the ways we simultaneously defy and exploit him, the ways he is packaged and sold in the marketplace of American ideas. In learning about “Lincoln, Inc.” we learn about ourselves, about who we think we are as a nation, and who we wish we could be.