Abraham Lincoln

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
$21.00
Plenty of people have reviewed this book. Let me just add a couple of reasons why you might enjoy this book:
(1) Through the way it approaches Lincoln's presidency the book provides insights into the US at the time as well as Lincoln's leadership style. So many interesting issues intersect in this book that you end up learning about everything from military tactics to the broad issues of slavery. In addition, Lincoln's days were filled with the great struggle to hold a nation together as well as more personal struggles as he dealt with the loss of his son. As a subject, the Lincoln presidency is hard to beat and this account is hard to beat.
(2) It's a very readable (but long) account of a tremendously important historical figure. I've read a lot of good books on various presidents and this one gave me one of the best views of any single book I've read. Theodore Rex (by Edmund Morris) and John Adams (David McCullough) are the only other volumes I can think of that provided such rich insights and were so enjoyable to read.

People can quibble over the details and a few southern apologists will reject any positive Lincoln biography. However, Team of Rivals is one of best books of its type and should be near the top of any reading list on US history.

Abraham Lincoln-His Life & Legacy
$34.95
History Channel at its best. Expecially the John Wilkes Booth DVD. A must for history buffs, yet interesting for anybody.

Abraham Lincoln
$12.95
More a long essay than a book, "Abraham Lincoln" surveys the life of the 16th president from birth to his fateful night when he was shot. In straightforward English, McPherson lays out Lincoln's life in easy prose and emulates the style of Lincoln himself: concise, eloquent, and profound.

The book makes a great gift for a Lincoln fan or a student of history.

A. Lincoln: A Biography
$35.00
There is an abundance of Lincoln biographies for the reader to choose from. Amazingly, there is only one truly outstanding, detailed multi-volume biography available -- Carl Sandberg's classic, which is now dated. Lincoln, perhaps our greatest President, deserves an updated, detailed look at his life, especially in light of the new source material discovered since Sandburg's study. Instead, we have a multitude of single-volume works, many concerned with narrow, arcane, sometimes bizarre and questionable aspects of Lincoln's life. We can add White's biography to the list of single-volume rehashes.

White presents a fairly straightforward retelling of Lincoln's life. There is, by neccesity, little detail or analysis of the things and people that shaped Lincoln's view of the world. White really fails when narrating Lincoln's Presidency, vis a vis the Civil War. In many stretches, he seems to do little more than reword MacPherson's brief study of Lincoln as Commander in Chief. Some of the passages are surprisingly similar to MacPherson. It's clear White is out of his element when dealing with military matters.

There are several aspects where White shines, however. His analysis of Lincoln's religious beliefs and how they shaped his policies are insightful and delivered within the context of Lincoln's times. Further, his analysis of how Lincoln used his tremendous skill as a writer/communicator to shape policy and reach both the average voter and the educated class, is just the kind of insight one would hope for in a new biography. I am not well educated in a formal sense -- the extent of my education in compositional analysis is limited to my English 101 class in nursing school. When White breaks down some of Lincoln's letters and addresses, explaining how he used rhetorical tools to make his points and direct his audience, he is at his best, offering me the equivalent of attending a class in composition. Rather than attempt a biography of Lincoln, perhaps White should have offered us an analytical study of Lincoln's public communications, or a study of Lincoln's religious beliefs, within a biographical context.

In the end, White's "A. Lincoln" fails to rise to the level of outstanding. When he stays within his intellectual comfort zone, White shines. It's obvious when he neccesarily strays into territory where he's intellectually uncomfortable. This book is a worthy purchase if you're interested in what it does offer, without expecting any new analysis of material out of the author's comfort-zone.