Abraham Lincoln, whose bicentennial is being celebrated this year, rivets our attention as the most important, successful, and wonderfully human president in American history. President Lincoln is one of the most studied individuals, and recent scholarship has focused on his emotional states and melancholia, his religious perspectives, and analyses of his ethical vision and character. The following books are suggestions for courses on Lincoln that examine his life and times as America expanded, changed, nearly disintegrated in the nation's bloodiest war, and finally emerged reunited under Lincoln's singular leadership.
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Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine Winner of the 2004 Lincoln Prize “An illuminating and thoroughly intelligent assessment of Lincoln the politician. . . . Carwardine provides a comprehensive study of how an essentially good man could gain and wield power even in scoundrel times.” —The New York Times Book Review |
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Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era
by David Herbert Donald When Lincoln Reconsidered was first published it ushered in the process of rethinking the Civil War that continues to this day. In the third edition, David provides two important new essays, on Lincoln's education and on Lincoln's complex and conflicted relationship to the rule of law. Click here for the Table of Contents. |
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Lincoln and Whitman by Daniel Mark Epstein Epstein has written a masterful portrait of two great American figures and the era they shaped through words and deeds. |
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New The Lincolns by Daniel Mark Epstein The first full-length portrait of the marriage of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in more than fifty years, The Lincolns is written with enormous sweep and striking imagery. |
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New Angels and Ages Lincoln, Darwin, and the Making of the Modern Age by Adam Gopnik “Darwin and Lincoln shared far more than a birthday. With incisive reasoning, Adam Gopnik shows that both men were wordsmiths, emancipating minds with rhetorical skills that were wedded to moral and scientific truths. . . . Gopnik has produced an engaging and novel celebration of the Darwin/Lincoln bicentennial.” —Jerry Coyne, The University of Chicago, and author of Why Evolution is True |
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New In Lincoln's Hand by Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk In Lincoln's Hand offers an unprecedented look at perhaps our greatest president through vivid images of his handwritten letters, speeches, and even childhood notebooks—many never before made available to the public. |
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American Brutus by Michael W. Kauffman In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history. |
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New Abraham Lincoln Extraordinary Era Written by Karen Kostyal Foreword by Doris Kearns Goodwin This is the official book of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM) in Springfield, Illinois and offers stories, anecdotes, and never-before-seen images and artifacts from the museum's vault. |
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New Looking for Lincoln: A Bicentennial Album by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and Peter W. Kundhardt, Jr “Fascinating. . . . Describes how Americans became obsessed by Lincoln from his death in 1865 to the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. . . . The Kunhardt family not only recount this story, but inhabit it.”
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What Lincoln Believed The Values and Convictions of America's Greatest President by Michael Lind “Without question Michael Lind's What Lincoln Believed is a landmark contribution to American historiography. . . . [T]his book allows us to understand Lincoln the thinker instead of Lincoln the myth. Whether he is writing about Henry Clay or the Revolutions of 1848 or laissez-faire economics, Lind is always a brilliant and original synthesizer.” —Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and Professor of History, University of New Orleans |
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Lincoln's Virtues An Ethical Biography by William Lee Miller William Lee Miller's ethical biography is a fresh, engaging telling of the story of Lincoln's rise to power. Through careful scrutiny of Lincoln's actions, speeches, and writings, and of accounts from those who knew him, Miller gives us insight into the moral development of a great politician. |
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President Lincoln The Duty of a Statesman by William Lee Miller “Miller is uncommonly skilled at blending narrative and analysis. . . . President Lincoln is one of the best and most beautifully written accounts of the great man's years in the White House.” —Michael F. Bishop, Washington Post Book World |
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New "They Have Killed Papa Dead!" by Anthony Pitch "A meticulously researched narrative of the Lincoln assassination, from the conspiracy and murder through the ensuing manhunt and trial. . . . Pitch turns the tragedy into a great American true-crime story." —Entertainment Weekly |
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New Did Lincoln Own Slaves? And Other Frequently Asked Questions About Abraham Lincoln by Gerald J. Prokopowicz "Prokopowicz answers every question with balanced and intelligent—but not pedantic—responses, wonderfully conversational style and readability, and more than a little humor. . . . It's fun. It's well written. . . . A valuable catalog of Lincoln information, very accessible, that is a good read from beginning to end." —America's Civil War |
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The Eloquent President by Ronald C. White, Jr. In The Eloquent President, historian Ronald C. White, Jr., examines Abraham Lincoln's astonishing oratory and explores his growth as a leader, a communicator, and a man of deepening spiritual conviction. |
Examination Copies are available
