Lincoln

Fülszöveg

Destined to become a classic in American history and
biography, David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a mas-
terly account of how one man's extraordinary politi-
cal acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War,
and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that ago-
nizing struggle for nationhood and equality.
This fully rounded biography of America's sixteenth
President is the product of Donald's half-century of study
of Lincoln and his times. In preparing it, Donald has
drawn more extensively than any previous writer on
Lincoln's personal papers and those of his contempo-
raries, and he has taken full advantage of the voluminous
newly discovered records of Lincoln's legal practice. He
presents his findings with the same literary skill and psy-
chological understanding exhibited in his previous biogra-
phies, which have received two Pulitzer Prizes.
Donald brilliantly traces Lincoln's rise from humble
origins in Kentucky to prominent positions in legal and... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Destined to become a classic in American history and
biography, David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a mas-
terly account of how one man's extraordinary politi-
cal acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War,
and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that ago-
nizing struggle for nationhood and equality.
This fully rounded biography of America's sixteenth
President is the product of Donald's half-century of study
of Lincoln and his times. In preparing it, Donald has
drawn more extensively than any previous writer on
Lincoln's personal papers and those of his contempo-
raries, and he has taken full advantage of the voluminous
newly discovered records of Lincoln's legal practice. He
presents his findings with the same literary skill and psy-
chological understanding exhibited in his previous biogra-
phies, which have received two Pulitzer Prizes.
Donald brilliantly traces Lincoln's rise from humble
origins in Kentucky to prominent positions in legal and
political circles in Illinois, and then to the pinnacle of the
presidency. He shows how, in all these roles, Lincoln
repeatedly demonstrated his enormous capacity for
growth, which enabled one of the least experienced and
most poorly prepared men ever elected to high office to
become a giant in the annals of American politics.
Much more than a political biography, Donald's
Lincoln reveals the development of the future President's
character and shows how his private life helped to shape
his public career. In Donald's skillful hands, Lincoln
emerges as a youthful, vigorous President. One of the
youngest men ever to occupy the White House, he was
also the husband of an even younger wife and the father of
boisterous children. We witness how Lincoln's absorption
with politics disrupted his family life, and how his often
tumultuous marriage affected his political career. And we
see a man renowned for his storytelling and his often
sidesplitting humor lapse into the periods of deep melan-
choly to which he was prone, not only during the dark
days of the Civil War but throughout his life.
Donald's biography is written from Lincoln's point of
view. In re-creating Lincoln's world, Donald seats us
behind the President's desk, where we read the papers and
reports he received and wrote, meet the politicians and
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generals and ordinary citizens who visited the President's
office, and observe Lincoln evaluating the evidence before
him and making the decisions that shaped modern
America.
Donald's strikingly original portrait of Lincoln
depicts a man who was basically passive by nature, who
confessed that he did not control events but events had
controlled him. Yet coupled with that fatalism was an
unbounded ambition that drove him to take enormous
political risks and enabled him to overcome repeated
defeats. Donald shows that Lincoln was a master of ambi-
guity and expediency—but he also stresses that Lincoln
was a great moral leader, inflexibly opposed to slavery and
absolutely committed to preserving the Union. Vissza