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 enlarge | Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Category: EBooks
List Price: $12.99
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $3.00 (23%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  398 reviews
Sales Rank: 72
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 944
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
ASIN: B000N2HBSO
Publication Date: December 20, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 team of rivals is flawed December 30, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
The book looks at three rivals who sort of worked together in the end. The book fails to address Lincolns disasterous decisions with the rest of his cabinet and the generals he selected. The cost of the war in terms of money and humanity due to his inability to select a proper set of generals while trying to appease everyone made the war last about 3 years longer than it ever had to considering all the advantages the north had.
If Linconls philosophy was to have a team of rivals it nearly destroyed the nation. Here's hoping Obama actually rereads his history and doesn't take too much away from this book he claims to love without knowing....the rest of the story.
 I love this book!!! December 26, 2008
This is the best book ever. I read it before when I got it from the library, and it was one of those books that I just had to own. It made me fall in love with Lincoln. Doris Kearns Goodwin's writing is wonderful. Reading this book allowed me to get to know him, I had a visceral feeling about him. I highly recommend this book, it has become one of my 5 most loved reads.
...and it became relevant for me in today's time after it was made known that Obama had read the book, and was picking his cabinet based on some of Abraham Lincoln's values as laid out in this book. Loving this book as I did, I felt I knew something about Obama, if it moved him to bring something from Abraham Lincoln and his presidency into our time.
Thank you Doris Kearn Goodwin for this most amazing book. I hope everyone who reads this book loves it as much as I did.
First rate December 24, 2008
With over 300 five star reviews so far, I do not think that another will add very much. I would, however, like to address the negative reviews that have criticized this book as providing nothing new. Firstly, this is a book of popular biography, meant for a general audience and not specifically for Lincoln scholars (although I have seen Lincoln scholars extol the virtues of this book on C-span). As a book of popular biography it undoubtedly brings much to light that the general reader probably did not know. Secondly, the first half of the book deals with the lives of Edward Bates, Salmon Chase and William Seward before they joined Lincoln's cabinet. (The lives of Edwin Stanton and various members of the Blair family are also discussed.) While biographies have been written about all of these people, it is unlikely that the general audience for whom this book is intended has read them and indeed if many of the people who are well versed on the life of Lincoln have read them either. Lastly, as the subtitle of the book states, this book is about the "political genius of Abraham Lincoln" and as such has a somewhat different (and more specific) slant than most Lincoln biographies. The second half of the book deals with Lincoln's interactions with the people whose biographies are provided in the first half of the book. It shows how they were turned from rivals who underestimated, and often denigrated, Lincoln, to men who came to respect and even love him.
I can't put this book down! December 23, 2008
I will make this short and sweet so you can get on with all the other reviews. I'm not a big reader, especially non-fiction. I honestly bought this book because Obama recommended it. I started reading and immediately could not put it down. I'm 45, a CPA, but not very academic as a child. I think I got all D's in history. I found myself transfixed to how human Lincoln and his cabinet were, and appreciated all the little details so I understood more about their emotions and the day to day living they withstood. I feel so much more connected with the history of my country. I experienced the same thing watching the recent TV series John Adams. For me its the same experience as when I finally lowered my own father off his pedistal and realized he wasn't super human, but a man, whom I am so more fonder of now than when he was super human! oK not so short, but I recommend this book for its own unique perspective.
New View December 22, 2008
Everybody who has read of the Civil War and Lincoln's administration has heard of Seward, Stanton, Chase, and Blair. Ms. Goodwin's treatment brings Lincoln and his "team" to life with enough background material to let the reader understand the tensions and interaction among the players. Better still, what other historians treated as Lincoln's dithering, Ms. Goodwin explains as gifted strategy and preparation. Fun read! Would have liked to see the sources noted.
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