Description

Author/Contributor(s):	White, Ronald C.
Publisher:	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Date:	5/4/2010
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

“If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln.”—
USA Today

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post • The Philadelphia Inquirer • The Christian Science Monitor • St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER AWARD

Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetimeand ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincolnaccording to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White,Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity–whattoday’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whose moral compass holds the keyto understanding his life.

Through meticulous research of the newly completed LincolnLegal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White providesa portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows usLincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas onscraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk;a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on anissue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiersand sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederateshore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with theimmorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw itforever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, forhis own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War thatwould become the basis of his finest address.

Most enlightening, the Abraham Lincolnwho comes into focus in this stellar narrative is a person of intellectual curiosity,comfortable with ambiguity, unafraid to “think anew and act anew.”

A transcendent,sweeping, passionately written biography that greatly expands our knowledge and understandingof its subject, A. Lincoln will engage a whole new generation of ispoised to shed a profound light on our greatest president just as America commemoratesthe bicentennial of his birth.