Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Simon & Schuster, 2006.
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is coming up, so no doubt there will be plenty of books in this area. Lincoln is an amazing figure, more than I’d ever appreciated. Though his political rivals generally started with limited respect for Lincoln, Lincoln convinced them that the country needed their service. Even though they didn’t always agree, Lincoln earned their respect.
Lincoln was better than his predecessor and better than his successor; it’s interesting to speculate how things might have happened if he’d lived.
Goodwin writes well, presenting the story from letters and papers of the original time. (There are plenty of footnotes in back:)