"A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar...

"Lincoln at Cooper Union explores Lincoln's most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address - an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln's suitability for the presidency, and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition...

As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration--an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent by any means necessary. Drawing on new research, this account reveals the President-Elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, foiling an assassination attempt, and forging an unbreakable bond with the American people. On the eve of his 52nd...

Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other esteemed Lincoln scholars, Shenk reveals how the sixteenth president harnessed depression to fuel his astonishing success. Lincoln found the solace and tactics he needed to deal with the nation's worst crisis in the "coping strategies" he had developed over a lifetime of persevering through depressive episodes and personal tragedies. With empathy and authority gained from his own experience...

Becoming Abraham Lincoln: The Coming of Age of Our Greatest President tells the true story of how this great American hero grew up and became a man. The story begins with Lincoln's cousin describing the murder of Abe's grandfather in 1782 by the Wabash Indians in the Kentucky wilderness. It ends as Lincoln turns twenty-five, downcast and debt-ridden after the failure of his first business venture, as he earns his first election victory to take his...

Argues that the sixteenth president of the United States was inspired by the Founding Fathers of the nation and struggled to carry on their work throughout his career.

"Michael Burlingame is one of the foremost authorities on Abraham Lincoln in the world; as James McPherson wrote in The New York Review of Books, "The author knows more about Lincoln than any other living person." The author or editor of over a dozen volumes about Lincoln, he is the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. This book represents an abridgement of his magisterial 2-volume...

"Lincoln's Spy follows the Civil War career of Charles A. Dana, who began the war as managing editor of the New York Tribune and was hired by Abraham Lincoln and War Secretary Edwin Stanton to be the government's roving troubleshooter and confidential informant at the front. Carl Guarneri tracks Dana's experiences, with plenty of never-before-examined sources and events, to provide a panorama of the war, with special emphasis on decisions about strategy...

"The first of a multi-volume history of Lincoln as a political genius--from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, assassination, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War dreams of Reconstruction. This first volume traces Lincoln from his painful youth, describing himself as 'a slave, ' to his emergence as the man we recognize as Abraham Lincoln. From his youth as a 'newsboy, ' a voracious newspaper reader, Lincoln became a free thinker, reading...