A. Lincoln: A Biography [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Ronald C. White Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 2009

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 understanding his life.

Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address.

Most enlightening, the Abraham Lincoln who comes into focus in this stellar narrative is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, unafraid to “think anew and act anew.”

A transcendent, sweeping, passionately written biography that greatly expands our knowledge and understanding of its subject, A. Lincoln will engage a whole new generation of Americans. It is poised to shed a profound light on our greatest president just as America commemorates the bicentennial of his birth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this excellent biography, veteran historian White emphasizes that Lincoln was our most likable major president, lacking Washington's aloofness and the deviousness of FDR and Jefferson. Many young men from the frontier overcame the handicaps of poverty and minimal education, but, White says, Lincoln did better than most, becoming floor leader in the Illinois legislature by age 30 and a prosperous lawyer. Contrary to the common view that Lincoln was a dark-horse for the 1860 presidential nomination after a single, undistinguished term in the House of Representatives, White stresses that Lincoln was an experienced politician, popular throughout Illinois, and known to national leaders. Few Republicans thought they had chosen badly. The author makes good use of Lincoln's voluminous private papers and those of his contemporaries to paint a vivid picture of Lincoln's thoughts as he matured and then guided the nation through the four worst years of its existence. White knows his subject cold and writes lucid prose, so readers choosing this as their Lincoln bicentennial reading will not go wrong. Illus., maps, photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Having already written two books on Abraham Lincoln, Ronald C. White, Jr., understands better than most the challenges in bringing a fresh perspective to the most scrutinized president in American history. With 16,000 books, and counting, on Lincoln (as well as several dozen more in the period before the bicentennial celebration of his birth), the ground that remains to be covered is disappearing before scholars' eyes. But White, who draws on his own thorough research of the recently available Lincoln Legal Papers and plenty of other new material, stakes his turf. His weighty, yet readable, tome compares favorably to the popular histories of Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals) and David McCullough (John Adams, Truman, The Great Bridge), making A. Lincoln a fine and useful addition to the growing canon of Lincolniana.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 816 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (January 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400064996
• ISBN-13: 978-1400064991
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #352,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

156 of 164 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly researched, extremely well-written Lincoln biography, January 18, 2009

By 

Cory Geurts (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A. Lincoln: A Biography (Hardcover)

What a refreshing read and pleasant experience this book is. Mr. White has the ability to convey so much information in an intelligent yet clear and easy-to-understand style. White takes the time to explain words or concepts that otherwise would send most readers to the dictionary. He couples this friendly presentation with all of the complexity and coverage of any other well-written presidential biography.

The author obviously possesses a wide-ranging and thorough knowledge of President Lincoln, his times and his presidency. As a biographical text about Abraham Lincoln, White's "A. Lincoln" provides great detail without sacrificing the larger picture.

Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" is an excellent book about the history of and inner-workings of Lincoln and his cabinet - and I highly recommend her book. But White's "A. Lincoln" simply blows "Team of Rivals" out of the water in terms of being a well-focused yet richly detailed historical biography.

Here are a few things I didn't see mentioned in the editorial reviews praising this book: White liberally shares photographs, maps, illustrations, documents, even signatures of key characters. Unlike many history/biography books, these are not confined to a few glossy pages in the middle of the book, but appear frequently throughout the text, and really help give depth to the places, events, people, and times. This book includes an extensive notes section, the most thorough bibliography I've ever seen in a single-volume biography, and a 28-page index.

If you visit this book on randomhouse.com, you can find a link to Mr. White's personal web site. On his website, I found Mr. White's Speaking Dates calendar, which includes a visit here (Portland, Oregon) next week at the Oregon Historical Society. I will be there and I am looking forward to meeting and hearing from Mr. White.

62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Preeminent Lincoln Biography, February 2, 2009

By 

Johnny "Uncle Johnny" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A. Lincoln: A Biography (Hardcover)

`A. Lincoln' by Ronald C. White Jr.

In this extremely well researched and superbly readable biography, Ronald White brings our 16th US President to life with clarity rarely seen among contemporary biographers. Beginning with a breakdown of the subjects family tree - a family tree, I may add, with branches that remained a mystery to Lincoln during his lifetime - through his congressional, senatorial and finally a remarkable presidential campaign. `Father Abraham' comes to life with vivid imagery of his time spent logically analyzing matters, which in retrospect, were monumental in our nations history. Lincoln's compassion, integrity and honesty shine through clearly in his relationships with cabinet members, old friends such as Joshua Speed and luminaries like Frederick Douglass. Mr. White does a splendid job demonstrating the near dazzling likeability this president possessed; rarely, if ever, did a political friend or foe find Lincoln anything but gracious, kind and magnanimous in most trying of times.

The second half of this book deals with Lincoln's presidency and devotes significant time to his prosecution of the Civil War. Family life takes somewhat of a backseat in the latter 250 or so pages as this time is spent with Lincoln formulating policy and self-educating on military strategy. However, family tragedies are examined and the effect these events had on the Lincoln family are discussed and analyzed.

`A. Lincoln' is an absolutely spellbinding read that I found near impossible to put down. It is as entertaining as it is educational, as comprehensive as it is compelling. Definitely pick it up and enjoy each and every page. Wonderful!

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the finest presidential biographies that I have read, December 26, 2009

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A. Lincoln: A Biography (Hardcover)

I've read somewhere around twenty to thirty books on Lincoln (along with FDR one of my two favorite American presidents) and this easily ranks among the very best that I have read. This is the one biography that I have read that competes with David Herbert Donald's volume as the best single-volume biography of Lincoln. It joins the short list of my favorite Lincoln books, including Doris Kearns Goodwin's A TEAM OF RIVALS, Allen C. Guelzo's ABRAHAM LINCOLN: REDEEMER PRESIDENT, Herndon's LINCOLN, William Lee Miller's LINCOLN'S VIRTUES, Mark Noll's THE CIVIL WAR AS A THEOLOGICAL CRISIS, the sections in Shelby Foote's THE CIVIL WAR on Lincoln, Gore Vidal's LINCOLN (actually an amazingly accurate depiction of Lincoln as president -- David Herbert Donald worked closely with Vidal to assure the novel's historical veracity), David Herbert Donald's LINCOLN, James McPherson's TRIED BY WAR, the Library of America two-volume collection of Lincoln's writings (I'd love the new three-volume edition, but for now I'm stuck with the older one), and Harold Holzer's IN HIS OWN HAND. All of these books provide new insights into Lincoln, but White's biography might actually provide the finest overview of Lincoln's life, even surpassing Oates, Donald, and Benjamin Thomas as the best single-volume biography.

The biography not only does an outstanding job of recounting all of the major events of Lincoln's life but does one of the best jobs I've ever seen of analyzing the logic of his speeches, letters, and public documents. This is no minor achievement. Lincoln is far and away the most analyzed figure in American history, in fact the most widely written about figure of the past two hundred years of any country (with the possible exception of Karl Marx). White also does a splendid job of showing how Lincoln remolded the United States, establishing the Declaration of Independence as the founding document. Many others have pointed this out (like Garry Wills in his book on the Gettysburg Address), but White does an outstanding job of placing it in the total context of Lincoln's life. He is also outstanding at showing the growth of Lincoln's thinking about the various issues, especially on the religious dimensions of the solution to the slavery.

I have talked to a couple of people who had troubles with this biography. I personally do not feel the force of their complaints, but they are worth mentioning. White's Lincoln is not a person with dark corners or moral ambiguities. White ignores (quite appropriately) the absurd accusations that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship, he does not even address the belief of some that Lincoln suffered from manic depression (my belief is that Lincoln's periods of depression were not indicative of bipolar, simply because the periods of depression of which we are aware were in response to truly traumatic events; depression was appropriate to the death of his child, the death of friends, the progress of the war, and other triggering events), or other aspects of his life. Neither is he especially critical of Lincoln's views on race, situating them in the beliefs of others at the time.

I enjoyed this book so much that it may be the single book that I would recommend to people who want to read a first book on Lincoln. In fact, if someone asked me for a recommend for a book on Lincoln, I would recommend this along with Doris Kearns Goodwin's TEAM OF RIVALS and Gore Vidal's novel LINCOLN (people underestimate it because it is fiction, but Vidal brought Lincoln's presidency to life more vividly than any other writer). This year was, of course, the bicentenary of the birth of Lincoln, which resulted in a deluge of books on Honest Abe, but for my money this was the best book of a very large bunch.