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Read more Barnes: View the complete library of his work.

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For fiction: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
For general nonfiction: Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
For biography: Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Carolyn Burke’s Lee Miller: A Life
For autobiography: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City
For criticism: John Updike’s Still Looking: Essays on American Art
And for poetry: Jack Gilbert’s Refusing Heaven

BOOKSELLERS, TAKE NOTE: Now you can promote all of this year’s NBCC award finalists in your store with one of our new downloadable posters and shelf-talkers.

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Winner of the 2005 Lincoln Prize

Preface

Abraham Lincoln understood the value of a well-judged disclaimer, so it may be as well to begin by stating what this book does not purport to be. It is not a personal biography of the sixteenth president of the United States. Rather, it is a study of Lincoln’s political career, one which explores the sources and characteristics of his political authority, both before and after he won national recognition.

To study Lincoln involves peering through a veil of myth and iconography. Any president who successfully steers a nation through a civil war can expect to be decked with the victor's laurels, but in Lincoln's case garlands for the Union’s Savior and Great Emancipator have been interwoven with wreaths for its First Martyr.

Keep reading this excerpt, and check out more new biographies and memoirs.

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THE GOOD LIFE by JAY MCINERNEY

Summer used to be as endless as the ocean when she was a girl and her family rented the gray shingled cottage on Nantucket. Now, she found it hard to believe she was already back in Manhattan and the kids were in school and she was already racing home, late again, feeling guilty that she'd lingered over a drink with Casey Reynes. The kids had been home for hours after their first day in first grade, and she had yet to hear about it.

Women blamed themselves; men blamed anything but.

Keep reading this excerpt, and check out more excerpts from forthcoming fiction.

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