Short answers, pulled from the story.
Richard N. Current earned the title "Dean of Lincoln Scholars" after completing the fourth volume of James G. Randall's biography of Abraham Lincoln, which won the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University in 1956. He went on to write seven more books about Lincoln, building one of the most sustained bodies of Lincoln scholarship in American historiography.
The Lincoln Nobody Knows, published in 1958, examines the seemingly contradictory elements of Lincoln's life and thought, particularly his views on slavery and race. Current argued that Lincoln's most remarkable quality was his capacity for growth, showing how Lincoln overcame the racist environment of his Kentucky and Indiana upbringing.
After Vidal published his 1984 novel Lincoln, Current accused him in The New York Review of Books of distorting the historical record and demonstrating ignorance of American English. Vidal responded by claiming Current had never read the full novel and that the controversial portrayal of Lincoln's colonization views came from a biography Current himself had written.
Current taught at Rutgers University, Hamilton College, Northern Michigan University, Lawrence University, Mills College, Salisbury State University, the University of Illinois, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also lectured internationally in Chile, Japan, India, and Antarctica.
Richard N. Current died on the 26th of October, 2012, at age 100, of Parkinson's disease. He was born on the 5th of October, 1912, in Colorado City, Colorado, and was buried in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Current's final book, published in 2003, was a collection of translations of writings by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, covering essays and stories from 1885 to 1949. It appeared under the title Knut Hamsun Remembers America.