Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in... (more)

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

by Joshua Wolf Shenk

In this astonishing and illuminating book, Joshua Wolf Shenk reveals the deep melancholy that pervaded Abraham Lincoln's life and its influence on his mature character. Mired in personal suffering as a young man, Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health. His coping strategies and depressive insight ultimately helped the sixteenth president find the strength that he, and America, needed to overcome the... (more)

Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a stunningly original portrait of 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,... (more)

Lincoln at Gettysburg

The Words That Remade America

by Garry Wills

The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead he gave the whole nation "a new birth of freedom" in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece. By examining both the address and Lincoln in... (more)

Lincoln: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers. To most Americans, Abraham Lincoln... (more)

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

by James M. McPherson

James McPherson, a bestselling historian of the Civil War, illuminates how Lincoln worked with—and often against— his senior commanders to defeat the Confederacy and create the role of commander in chief as we know it . Though Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House with no previous military experience (apart from a couple of months spent soldiering in 1832), he quickly established himself as the greatest... (more)

Lincoln: A Photobiography (Houghton Mifflin social studies)

Lincoln: A Photobiography (Houghton Mifflin social studies)

by Russell Freedman

A description of the boyhood, marriage, and young professional life of Abraham Lincoln includes his presidential years and also reflects on the latest scholarly thoughts about our Civil War president.

A. Lincoln: A Biography

by Ronald C. White

Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according 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–what today’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whose moral compass holds the key to... (more)

Assassination Vacation

by Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation , she takes us on a road trip like no other -- a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage. From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry... (more)

The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations (Thrift Edition)

The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations (Thrift Edition)

by Bill Adler, Abraham Lincoln, James C. Humes, Bob Blaisdell

From the most eloquent of American presidents, nearly 400 astute observations on subjects ranging from women to warfare: "Bad promises are better broken than kept"; "Marriage is neither heaven nor hell; it is simply purgatory"; "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

Land of Lincoln

by Andrew Ferguson

Before he grew up and became one of Washington’s most respected reporters and editors, Andrew Ferguson was, of all things, a Lincoln buff — with the photos hung on his bedroom wall to prove it. Decades later, Ferguson’s latent buffdom is reignited. In Land of Lincoln , he embarks on a curiosity-fueled coast-to-coast journey through contemporary Lincoln Nation, encountering everything from hatred to adoration to... (more)

Stealing Lincoln's Body

by Thomas J. Craughwell

On the night of the presidential election in 1876, a gang of counterfeiters out of Chicago attempted to steal the entombed embalmed body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. The custodian of the tomb was so shaken by the incident that he willingly dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the president's corpse. In a lively and dramatic narrative, Thomas J. Craughwell returns to this bizarre, and... (more)

The Gettysburg ; the graphic novel

by C. M. Butzer

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is familiar to all Americans. But never has his most famous speech—his 271 indelible words—been presented in such a visual and accessible format. Graphic artist and Civil War aficionado C. M. Butzer deftly uses a detailed, comic-book style to depict the Battle of Gettysburg; the national movement to create a memorial there; and the quiet day in 1863 when Lincoln delivered... (more)

The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows

The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows

by G. S. Boritt

The words Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg comprise perhaps the most famous speech in history. Many books have been written about the Gettysburg Address and yet, as Lincoln scholar Gabor Boritt shows, there is much that we don't know about the speech. In The Gettysburg Gospel he tears away a century of myths, lies, and legends to give us a clear... (more)

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 — one who made the choice to go into politics, and ultimately realized that vocation’s fullest moral possibilities. As ... (more)

Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times

Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times

by Donald T. Phillips

With its emphasis on the rights and power of the individual, Lincoln on Leadership is destined to become the must-have handbook for executives in the nineties.

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

by J. Kevin Sheehan

A Leader Becomes a Leader opens with a window on history: Henry David Thoreau riding a borrowed horse and wagon into the woods around Concord, Massachusetts to Walden Pond in 1845. There, he writes a classic work that has a powerful effect on the lives and philosophies of seminal leaders in the next century as diverse as Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Thoreau believed that a... (more)

Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

by James M. McPherson

James McPherson has emerged as one of America's finest historians. Battle Cry of Freedom, his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times Book Review, called "history writing of the highest order." In that volume, McPherson gathered in the broad sweep of events, the political, social, and cultural forces at work during the Civil War era. Now,... (more)

The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

by Candace Fleming

THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR of Ben Franklin’s Almanac and Our Eleanor has created an enthralling joint biography of our greatest president and his complex wife unlike any other—a scrapbook history that uses photographs, letters, engravings, and even cartoons, along with a fascinating text, to form an enthralling museum on the page. Here are the extraordinary lives of Abraham and Mary, from their disparate... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: lincoln

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

by James L. Swanson

by Joshua Wolf Shenk

by David Herbert Donald

The Words That Remade America

by Garry Wills

by Gore Vidal

by James M. McPherson

by Russell Freedman

by Ronald C. White

by Sarah Vowell

by Bill Adler, Abraham Lincoln, James C. Humes, Bob Blaisdell

by Andrew Ferguson

by Thomas J. Craughwell

by C. M. Butzer

by G. S. Boritt

by William Lee Miller

by Donald T. Phillips

by J. Kevin Sheehan

by James M. McPherson

by Candace Fleming