With the birth of a newborn comes sleeplessness. So far my son still mostly wakes up every 2 hours and that means my wife and I wake up as well. At least I'm only working half-days this week.

There are all sorts of books on my list to read, many of which I own already. Presently, I'm trying to finish Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln. I acquired it within the last two years when I noticed it among the special value hard covers at the local Borders Bookstore, but I've only started reading it recently. So far I'm about 80 pages into it. Lincoln's early years certainly make plain the humble background in which he grew up. He engaged in lots of manual labor. At one point he even was a wrestler. At this point in the book he is still a young lawyer with some political connections with the Whigs. I am not yet particularly impressed with him. He has so far supported legal measures that I would be opposed to such as tariffs. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to further reading and hope to acquire a more detailed knowledge of the Civil War period, of which I am ignorant in many ways.