Lincoln
Authors: David Herbert Donald
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“A grand work—the Lincoln biography for this generation.”
—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
I
n this beautifully rendered and stunningly original portrait of the sixteenth president, Lincoln emerges as both a great leader and an imperfect human being—a vigorous man beset by personal and political troubles who weathered them all to become America’s most revered president. Drawing extensively from Lincoln’s personal papers and from newly discovered records of Lincoln’s legal practice, David Herbert Donald brilliantly re-creates the president’s rise from obscurity to the heights of political glory. He explains how Lincoln’s personal and public lives adversely affected each other, how the president felt events were beyond his control, and how, despite everything, this inexperienced and ill-prepared man grew into a chief executive of extraordinary political acumen and moral greatness. Like Donald’s other two Pulitzer Prize–winning biographies,
Lincoln
is destined to become a classic of its kind.
“
Lincoln
immediately takes its place among the best of the genre, and it is unlikely that it will be surpassed in elegance, incisiveness and originality in this century. . . . A book of investigative tenacity, interpretive boldness and almost acrobatic balance.”
—Harold Holzer,
Chicago Tribune
“Eagerly awaited,
Lincoln
fulfills expectations. Donald writes with lucidity and elegance.”
—James M. McPherson,
The Atlantic Monthly
“A one-volume study of Lincoln’s life that will augment and replace the previous modern standards by Benjamin Thomas (1953) and Stephen Oates (1977). Donald’s
Lincoln
is a scholarly achievement.”
—David W. Blight,
Los Angeles Times
is the Charles Warren Professor Emeritus of American History and American Civilization at Harvard University. Author of
Lincoln’s Herndon, Lincoln Reconsidered, The Civil War and Reconstruction,
and
We Are Lincoln Men,
and editor of
Why the North Won the Civil War,
he has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for biography: in 1961 for
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War,
and in 1988 for
Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe
. He lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Cover design by David Ter-Avanesyan
Cover photograph © The Granger Collection, New York
Author photograph by David Schaefar
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A
LSO
BY
D
AVID
H
ERBERT
D
ONALD
Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe
Liberty and Union: The Crisis of Popular Government, 1830–1890
The Great Republic: A History of the American People
(with Bernard Bailyn, David Brion Davis, Robert Dallek,
John L. Thomas, Gordon S. Wood, and Robert H. Wiebe)
Gone for a Soldier: The Civil War Memoirs
of Private Alfred Bellard
(editor)
Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man
The Nation in Crisis, 1861–1877
The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863–1867
Diary of Charles Francis Adams: Volume I, January 1820-June 1825,
and
Volume II, July 1825-September 1829
(editor with Aïda DiPace Donald)
The Civil War and Reconstruction
(with J. G. Randall)
Why the North Won the Civil War
(editor)
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War
Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era
Divided We Fought: A Pictorial History of the War, 1861–1865
(with others)
Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase
Lincoln’s Herndon
F
OR
A
ÏDA
AND
B
RUCE,
WHO HAVE HAD TO LIVE WITH
L
INCOLN
FOR MOST OF THEIR LIVES
