Yale Templeton, an undistinguished professor of History at a university in Toronto, has made a shocking discovery: Abraham Lincoln was not, in fact, assassinated, but faked his own death so that he could assume a new identity and move to Canada. And the reason for Lincoln's ruse? Even more shocking. When the news breaks, the sitting President enlists his chief security officers to find the incriminating evidence and silence Templeton. Lincoln's Briefs is both a burlesque of university life and a satiric unravelling of Canadian - and American - national identity. It is also, in its own madcap way, a manifesto for the right of all people to lay claim to their true selves.