Occasionally a book that begins as a work of scholarship becomes a great and profoundly moving human document. This life of Lincoln's friend, law partner and biographer is such a book. It has a two-fold focus: on the "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" days--the days of Lincoln's courting, arguing, and politicking; and on Herndon's long and wracking fight to publish his biography in the face of poverty, drive, and disillusionment, it achieves the impetus and grandeur of tragedy. David Donald has given us a magnificent account of how a country lawyer became a national figure and what happened to the...

David Herbert Donald, Lincoln biographer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has revised and updated his classic and influential book on Lincoln and the era he dominated.

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 patchy education--which we find was more extensive than even the great man realized--and on Lincoln's complex and conflicted relationship to the rule of law. Together with a new preface and a thoroughly updated...

A masterful work by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincoln's life and presidency.

Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln's gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln's character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so...

In this brilliant and illuminating portrait of our sixteenth president, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David Herbert Donald examines the significance of friendship in Abraham Lincoln's life and the role it played in shaping his career and his presidency.

Though Abraham Lincoln had hundreds of acquaintances and dozens of admirers, he had almost no intimate friends. Behind his mask of affability and endless stream of humorous anecdotes, he maintained an inviolate reserve that only a few were ever able to penetrate.

Professor Donald's remarkable book offers a fresh way of looking at...

A Lincoln book that says something new is a rarity. Conversations with Lincoln is just such a book. In it Charles M. Segal has collected and presented more than one hundred interviews with Lincoln as President-elect and President. As a revelation of the intimate, human side of Abraham Lincoln, it will be a source of endless fascination to every reader interested in the Civil War era. This is a wide-ranging and engaging volume. The conversations collected here (between 1860 and 1865) range from brief remarks to extended discussions. Mr. Segal introduces each interview and the personalities...