Reading this book (or listening on Audible in my case) is a labor of love - it is detailed, intricate and long. But wow, is it incredible. The way DKG weaves together the stories of a ll Lincoln's cabinet members personally and politically and explains their respective roles in American history is astounding. I've never learned so much American history from a single book and enjoyed it along the way.

I have also never respected Abraham Lincoln as much as I do after reading this. He truly was an incredible leader.

"This war is eating my life out. I have a strong impression that I shall not live to see the end." (Abe Lincoln)

My word...what would have happened to the United States of America if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been elected at the right moment in time? Stunning. As an average reader, my knowledge of Lincoln was standard, that is, he was the Great One who saved the Americans from their own absurdity. But this book took me on a whole new journey, showing an embattled President who had to deal not only with a divided country, but with a divided cabinet. And what a cabinet!

Salmon P. Chase - Treasury
Chase very much wanted to be the President himself. He was a strong member to have on a team but watcheth thy backeth. Lacked any wit and couldn't even win his own state.

William H. Seward - Secretary of State
He wanted to be the President, also. But he had a clearer understanding of Lincoln's greatness, grew close to the tall dude, and became a loyal friend. He barely survived the assassination attempt on his own life.

Edward Bates - Attorney General
Democrat leaner...Southern sentiments. Isolated himself from most, but a strong family man.

The other cabinet members, such as Stanton and Welles, did not think much of Lincoln at first. But as the President grew into his greatness, they became much valued teamplayers. And then there was the arrogant Union general, McClellan (hiss, boo), who thought he was the bee's knees. A terrific administrator, he was unable to initiate a battle and bad-mouthed Lincoln at every opportunity.

This is a wonderful read. So much information in every area. Bio details on Lincoln and each cabinet member. Information on the pre-Civil War elections. Mary Lincoln's crazed emotions as her sons died. The fine line Lincoln had to walk between the progressive abolitionists and the butt-hurt Democrats. It's all here. Just marvelous.

Most of all, I would recommend this book for any corporate leader. Lincoln didn't hire yes-men, he hired the best minds he could find even though the members of the team fought and connived. Lincoln did what was best for the country and his amazing patience and ability to forgive meant he was able to lead a high-performance ensemble. This could very well be the best business book one can read to learn how to be a true leader.

The writing is superb, the transitions are smooth, and the details utterly amaze. For anyone wanting to add this to their to-read lists, I suggest either getting the hardcover or getting an e-read. This is because I made the mistake of buying the softbound copy and the cover is so thin and flimsy, I tore it apart fairly quickly. A mere quibble.

Greatness. Thank you, Mr. Lincoln. Wow.

Book Season = Year Round (mystic chords of memory)

Doris Kearns Goodwin's style in this well-researched biography isn't as smooth as in her previous books. I wondered if the taint of implied plagerism restricted her prose and influenced her writing. As always, everything is well-cited, but there is a dryness not present in her other books. The style is more McCullough/Ellis like than her usual clear Goodwinesque voice.
Nonetheless, in these times, it is amazing to imagine a President appointing his political rivals to his Cabinet. I learned far more about the unrest leading to the Civil war than i ever knew and have a new admiration for the cast of characters in the "team" many of whom I had scant knowledge about.

I would have given this book more stars if I could have. I think I loved this book so much because Abraham Lincoln was such an absolutely amazing person. We are all taught that Lincoln was one of America's great presidents, and we know that he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but he is so much greater of a man than I ever knew. Lincoln was super smart, wise, and incredibly compassionate and empathetic. While unsure of his own faith, Lincoln, through his own care for others, was so much more of a Christ-like person than the overtly pious self-righteous Salmon Chase (Lincoln's former rival and Secretary of the Treasury who, while disparaging of others characters, allowed himself to be uncritical of his own unethical actions [much like our current president - in my opinion]).

This book showed Mary Lincoln in a better light than I had expected. I had always had the impression that Mary was a real stinker, and while she definitely had her faults that must have been caused real difficulties for the president, she also had many good qualities. One thing that impressed me is how she personally gave service to soldiers while not allowing any of her kind actions to be made known to the Washington social elite. While Mary may not have always been easy to live with, I felt kind of bad for her since she suffered from such severe migraines and depression. Who's to say for sure, but this book left me with the impression that Mary probably really tried to be a good gal despite her mental/physical problems.

I did like the point of view of this book. Telling the history of Lincoln's political and personal life inclusive with the lives of his opponents-turned-collaborators not only gave a more complete view of the times and happenings of the mid 1800s, but it demonstrated in a few cases what Lincoln did so widely, humbly, and deftly; turn those against him into believers and supporters of his work.

One interesting thing that Lincoln did that I loved about him, and can't stand about George W. Bush, is that Lincoln, while not being dishonest, again unlike our current president, used much political slide-of-hand to get things done. I guess the biggest difference between Lincoln and some of our modern politicians is that while this technique is used today to cover up wrongdoings or cheating, Lincoln used it to help bring unity back to the nation and freedom to all people.

“There was little to lead one to suppose that Abraham Lincoln, nervously rambling the streets of Springfield that May morning [during the Republican National Convention], who scarcely had a national reputation, certainly nothing to equal any of the other three [rivals], who had served but a single term in Congress, twice lost bids for the Senate, and had no administrative experience whatsoever, would become the greatest historical figure of the nineteenth century…”
-tDoris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

As with many of history’s iconic figures, there is no shortage of books about Abraham Lincoln. If you want to read about him, the trouble is not finding a book, but in finding the right one to suit your needs. There is hardly an aspect of the sixteenth president’s fifty-six years on earth that has not been mined for literary purposes. If you want to read about Lincoln and race, there’s a book for that. If you want to read about Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief, there’s a book for that. If you want to read about Lincoln’s sexuality, his mental health, his marriage, his law practice, or his vampire hunting abilities, there are books on those topics as well.

With such a dauntingly extensive bibliography, Team of Rivals stands out from the rest for two reasons.

First, it finds a fresh angle to approach a man who is as recognizable as Jesus, and whose biographies could fill an entire library.

Second, it is written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of the best popular historians of our time.

Goodwin’s innovation is to place Lincoln slightly off center, and to focus instead on his cabinet, the titular “team of rivals.” In a way, this is a multiple biography covering Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

The book starts with the Republican National Convention of 1860, where Lincoln faced off with Chase, Bates, and Seward (the odds-on favorite). This section was excellent, and highlights Goodwin’s gift for giving form to the ghosts of the past. Expertly and efficiently, Goodwin weaves these disparate and fascinating individuals together, highlighting their similarities and their differences, their strengths and weaknesses. For instance, she introduces Lincoln's Treasury Secretary:

Salmon Portland Chase, in contrast to the ever buoyant Seward, possessed a restless soul incapable of finding satisfaction in his considerable achievements. He was forever brooding on a station in life not yet reached, recording at each turning point in his life regret at not capitalizing on the opportunities given to him.

Later, Goodwin presents the beautifully-bearded Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s second Secretary of War (because he was not a Republican, much less a Republican nominee in 1860, he is not one of Goodwin’s featured stars; still he gets his share of time on stage):

Six years younger than Chase, Stanton was a brilliant young lawyer from Steubenville, Ohio. He had been active in Democratic politics from his earliest days. A short, stout man, with thick brows and intense black eyes hidden behind steel-rimmed glasses, Stanton had grown up in a Quaker family dedicated to abolition. He later told the story that “when he was a boy his father had – like the father of Hannibal against Rome – made him swear eternal hostility to slavery.”

Stanton originally thought Lincoln an incompetent rube. Lincoln didn't take this personally, and replaced the actually-incompetent Simon Cameron with Stanton after the first year of the war. The two developed an incredible working relationship, and upon Lincoln's death, it was the distraught Stanton told the world he uttered the immortal phrase: “Now he belongs to the Ages.” (Strikingly, no one around Lincoln's death bed remembers Stanton saying this. Maybe he just thought it, and wished he'd said it).

After giving us a quadruple bio of Lincoln, Seward, Chase and Bates – the rivals for the Republican nomination – Goodwin takes us through the Civil War. Her focus is not on the ins-and-outs of the various battles, which have been well covered in several thousand books; rather, she views everything through the prism of Lincoln's cabinet. This is a wonderfully structured, propulsive story, showing a keen-eye for meaningful details, and imbued with humanity. Someone who's never read a book on Lincoln or the Civil War will follow along just nicely, while even those who are quite familiar with the tale will enjoy how amazingly it is told.

When Team of Rivals was first published, it added a new phrase to the American lexicon. Goodwin’s thesis here is that Lincoln’s cabinet oft-incongruent cabinet was a good thing. Though it detracts absolutely nothing from this book’s value, I’m not sure she completely sells the argument.

For example, Attorney General Bates, after his big rollout, nearly disappears from the narrative. Treasury Secretary Chase was a wrong fit from the start, and Lincoln eventually had to appoint him to the Supreme Court to get rid of him. Lincoln also had to sack Secretary of War Simon Cameron, and replace him with a true “rival,” longtime Democrat Edwin Stanton. Rather than a virtuous gathering of old foes, the Cabinet appears rather dysfunctional.

Long before Truman, the buck stopped with Lincoln. Some of his big moments, such as the Emancipation Proclamation, were unilateral decisions, and came as a surprise to his Cabinet. Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation shows how fraught the “team of rivals” idea can be. It sharply divided the cabinet, with Lincoln receiving advice of varying degrees. Bates and Stanton were for it immediately; Chase and Caleb Smith were against it. Then there was Seward, a smart man who wasn't as smart as Lincoln:

William Henry Seward's mode of intricate analysis produced a characteristically complex reaction to the proclamation. After the others had spoken, he expressed his worry that the proclamation might provoke a racial war in the South so disruptive to cotton that the ruling classes in England and France would intervene to protect their economic interests. As secretary of state, Seward was particularly sensitive to the threat of European intervention. Curiously, despite his greater access to intelligence from abroad, Seward failed to grasp what Lincoln intuitively understood: that once the Union truly committed itself to emancipation, the masses in Europe, who regarded slavery as an evil demanding eradication, would not be easily maneuvered into supporting the South.

I suppose it could be argued that Lincoln wanted a bunch of devil’s advocates to test his own decisions. Still, this was a bickering, troublesome, quarreling lot, and a lot of the advice he received was simply bad. It’s hard to see how the enormous burden on Lincoln’s shoulders was relieved by his closest advisors telling him he was wrong. Thankfully, as the war progressed, he came into a good working partnership with Seward and Stanton. Before that, however, there was quite a bit of lost time.

With all that said, I am not indifferent to the political tightrope that Lincoln had to walk from the beginning. Due to the wildly fragmented nature of the 1860 election – featuring four major candidates – Lincoln did not exactly take office with a strong mandate. Lacking this, and facing the greatest challenge the United States ever faced, he was forced to make bad deals from the start. If you don’t believe me, just look at the roster of the Army of the Potomac, filled with incompetents who happened to have strong constituencies. Lincoln’s cabinet was obviously a concession to this reality, and an attempt to present a solid front. Unlike Goodwin, I just don’t think this was an advantage Lincoln harnessed, but yet another obstacle for him to overcome.

At over 750-pages of text, this is a pretty big volume. Yet it reads short. I blew through Team of Rivals like it was a novel. Though Goodwin is trying to embrace many different lives, she succeeds with grace. I read all kinds of history books, some academic, some popular; some focused on analysis and interpretative theories, others on pure narrative. All types have their value. But if I have to choose, I want a book that connects me to the past in an intimate way. I want to know these people that lived in that strange and distant world that has come and gone. Goodwin does this effortlessly.

At the end of Team of Rivals, Goodwin relates a story told by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. According to Tolstoy, he was visiting a tribal chief in the Caucuses and regaling the tribe with stories of Alexander, Frederick the Great and Caesar. When Tolstoy stood to leave, the tribal chief stopped him:

“But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock...His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.”

This story sounds like something out of fiction, which is to say, it sounds like it was something Tolstoy invented. Still, I’d like it to be true. Certainly, it is a sentiment I can agree with. When it comes to Lincoln, I’m with that chief: Tell me about that man. I am always on the lookout for another book about the complex, imperfect, monumentally impactful Abraham Lincoln. All the better if it is written by a historian with the consummate skill and artistry of Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Yesssss! I did it y'all!



This is an accomplishment. Team of Rivals is dense, not gonna lie, but incredible and so worth it.

If you set one reading goal for yourself, in your life, it should be to read this book. The writing, Lincoln's life, the goings on of the cabinet and the country ... wow, wow, wow.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

http://bestpresidentialbios.com/2014/...

“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” is, by almost any measure, the most popular biography of Abraham Lincoln. Written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Team of Rivals” has been widely read and revered since its publication in 2005. Goodwin is a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and historian who has also written notable biographies of Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Although focused on Abraham Lincoln, this book is a skillfully-crafted multiple biography of Lincoln and his three key rivals for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 1860. William Seward, Edward Bates and Salmon Chase each became key members of Lincoln’s cabinet, and each contributed greatly to both the strength and the dissonance which infused his administration. How Lincoln harnessed the capabilities of this unique coalition of talented, but fiercely competitive, voices is the subject of much of Goodwin’s analysis.

Goodwin’s focus on Lincoln’s willingness to incorporate rivals into his administration, and on how he dealt with their often enormous egos, sets this book apart from the large roster of Lincoln-focused biographies. This interesting angle proves to be the book’s raison d’etre as well as one of its minor weaknesses.

Lost to the reader due to the need to jump between the early lives of the four main characters is a more comprehensive exploration of Lincoln’s scrappy frontier upbringing and his intense desire for self-improvement. While benefitting from time spent with Seward, Chase and Bates, it comes at the expense of a richer, more vibrant understanding of Lincoln’s evolution from unskilled laborer to budding lawyer to astute politician and master-of-leader.

Those who have not yet read a more comprehensive account of Lincoln’s early life (by Burlingame, White, Donald, Oates or others) will be largely unaware of the missing color. But for a Lincoln aficionado, Goodwin’s description of Lincoln’s early decades of life may seem slightly rushed or flat.

Also disappointing for me was Goodwin’s too-efficient handling of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Where other biographers highlight these debates as the crucial pivot-point in Lincoln’s political progression, Goodwin provides a less enthralling account and seems to underemphasize their significance somewhat.

However, after introducing each of the four main characters, Goodwin’s story begins to shine with Lincoln’s election as president. She provides as dramatic and interesting an account of events between Lincoln’s election and inauguration as I can recall seeing. And she presents the best review of the drafting and editing of Lincoln’s inaugural address I’ve read (providing an early but important glimpse into the relationship between Lincoln and Seward, who served as his Secretary of State).

Goodwin’s treatment of the volatile Mary Lincoln is the most balanced I have encountered – she is portrayed as a pathologic villain in some biographies and is barely mentioned in others. And as part of Goodwin’s account of the self-absorbed and overly ambitious Secretary of the Treasury, she often (arguably too frequently) highlights the side-roles played by Salmon Chase’s tantalizing and acutely intelligent daughter, Kate.

But the most valuable service performed by “Team of Rivals” is its analysis of Lincoln’s relationships with his cabinet members – and their relationships with each other. Rather than diluting the comprehensibility of Lincoln’s presidency, Goodwin’s frequent focus on this group of men enhances the reader’s understanding of events. Where some biographies describe a dizzying array of failed Union generals and unsuccessful military tactics, this biography maintains its focus on the decision-making process in Washington – while not ignoring the battlefield.

Although Goodwin spends comparatively little time in pursuit of Lincoln’s assassin once he flees Washington, she describes the audacious plot to simultaneously assassinate Lincoln, his vice president and Secretary of State Seward far better than any other biography I’ve read. And while Goodwin provides few of her own reflections on Lincoln’s legacy, she leaves the reader with a fascinating glimpse into the lives of each of the book’s major characters following his death.

Overall, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” is an interesting and thoughtful exploration of Lincoln’s life with a slightly different focus than is offered by most biographies. This book take a few chapters to build a full head of steam, but in full flight it is enormously captivating. Probably most valuable to someone already acquainted with Lincoln, it can also serve as an excellent introduction for the Lincoln novice. “Team of Rivals” is both an entertaining story and a valuable source of insight into Lincoln - and not to be missed.

Overall rating: 4½ stars

I read this book a couple of years ago. It is without question one of the greatest biographies of Lincoln out there. It gives a short history of each man in Lincoln's cabinet and then the meat of the book follows what they did and believed and how they interacted during Lincoln's presidency and the Civil War. I have never seen a book that so beautifully demonstrates how Lincoln brilliantly balanced the fine line between personal ideology and political necessity.

That is why I am shocked that I did not review it at the time. This book came up in a recent 4th of July type discussion and I came over here to see what I wrote about it only to find nothing. What? I'm half tempted to read it again just so I can give it the review it deserves. Strike that. I will be reading it again. But not for the review. No. I'll do it because the book is really good and definitely deserves another take. I've read a lot of books on Lincoln and the Civil War. This is, without hesitation, the best of the lot.

By the time I finished this book I felt I had lived a life time with Abe and was fully acquainted with the members of his cabinet. The book is actually five (or more) biographies which explains its length. It's hard to imagine any other personality being able to do what Lincoln did in holding the northern political extremes together during the Civil War.

The following short description of the books is from my Book Lover's Calendar (Workman Publishing Co.). I thought it was a very good summary of the book.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of nonfiction’s gifts to the world. Here she examines Lincoln’s political savvy in his choosing for allies disgruntled rivals William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward M. Stanton, and Edward Bates, enlisting all three opponents in the Republication nomination of 1860 for important posts in his cabinet. The “rube” from Illinois won the respect and loyalty of these accomplished, urbane men, and together they put their skills and abilities to work in the service of a nation very much in need of leadership and vision.

DKG is a genius. No other words needed.

5 Stars. This is well researched. I hope to do a review before this year ends.

Abraham Lincoln had always seemed to me, an outsider flattening my nose against the fishbowl of American history, generally a big deal. In his story's oversimplified version, he kept his country together, freed slaves, and was all but deified upon his assassination. The man was, even if everyone else at the time didn't know it, "still too near to his greatness" as they were, "[h]is genius... still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us," as Leo Tolstoy put it, a veritable badass. Pitting him against vampires was redundant. The broad strokes of his life were already very well-known to me, burned into the public consciousness as they have been by more books, biopics, and occasional pop-culture references combined than any one person save Doris Kearns Goodwin with her superpowers of research and organization can know what to do with. Most people are usually content enough not to investigate any further.

Team of Rivals, however, had been recommended so frequently in so many different circles, selected so often by various algorithms as my next to-read based on my reading history, and nibbling so determinedly at my subconscious that I had finally to take the leap, bump the book up the priority list, and give my curiosity the chew toy it had been growling at me for. What caution there initially was quickly went out the window after not even ten pages. The rabbit hole I fell headfirst into with this book was one I regretted to find someone had lacked the foresight to dump a million more rabbits into and dig more of, the better to stave off the inevitability I dreaded was hurtling towards Lincoln. The obligatory appreciation, approaching almost offensive indifference, that colored my early perceptions of him had by the final pages exploded into the sort of enthusiasm and love people reserve in their hearts for boy bands, superhero movies, or football.

The word "politician," as soon as it's verbalized into the air to there hang unpleasantly like some gas passed inside an elevator, has taken on negative connotations. Anyone who works in the profession and has the slightest self-awareness would think twice before volunteering such information to a forgetful aunt they never see except sometimes at family functions. If it were more a rule than the rarest exception that politicians actually strive to be like Lincoln in intention as well as action, pitchforks and torches would've been used for their original purpose. It's tempting to think he had it easier because times then were simpler, but that way lies confusion: if keeping countless plates spinning without any of them wobbling and falling, all in the hope of stopping his country from crashing and burning, is considered having it easy, what might the whole situation look like on insanity mode?

What most of all set Lincoln apart from his contemporaries, as Goodwin began hammering home with her choice of book title, was his pragmatism. He had the crazy idea to form his Cabinet not like his predecessors had done by surrounding themselves with agreeable faces and building an echo chamber, but by plucking men from the opposition who fought against him for the Republican nomination and others from different factions who had no reason or inclination to treat Lincoln, then relatively inexperienced in the political arena, with kid gloves. At the time, the country was little better than a house of cards. Choosing from all the prominent parts of his party instead of his own and making certain they each had a voice in the government gave that house solid ground. Because he "had no right to deprive the country of their services," Lincoln had only thoughts of what was best for the people in mind when he sought help from "the strongest men of the party" who would make up the Cabinet and restore calm and sanity to a party that seemed then about to implode and inadvertently usher in a slaveopia. Not only was he open-minded enough to give opposing viewpoints their due consideration, but he had confidence enough that none of them if unsound would sway his own, which his surprised Cabinet soon came to find out and grudgingly respect.

Lincoln alone is interesting enough to read about. Goodwin, still the fantastic writer in this alternative scenario, would enjoy no less success were she to have focused solely on his life and not biographized three other men's as well. No greater decision could she have made, however, than that she ended up doing otherwise. To appreciate Lincoln's political achievements, many requiring no less than Herculean efforts to secure, it is helpful to understand what obstacles he went up against and overcame. Charismatic and loyal William Henry Seward, brooding and shady Salmon Chase, and old and traditional Edward Bates, Lincoln's three biggest hurdles on his road to the presidency, wanted it no less. Split into two parts, Team of Rivals dedicates much of the first to the lives of these four men facing each other down for their name to be on the Republican presidential ticket, and while Lincoln naturally remains the central figure of the book, Goodwin touches with equal attention on Seward's popularity and evolving political strategy, Chase's lack thereof and blind ambitions, and Bates' family life and more conservative tendencies. Emerging at the end of their sections, some with prospects more optimistic than the last, I wondered how Lincoln hoped to beat any of them. It was their race to lose.

By doing the exact opposite of what his opponents did and not giving in to complacency in Seward's case, harboring silly delusions of grandeur in Chase's, and offending important voting blocs in Bates', Lincoln seemed like he was in the right place at the right time when delegates started directing their votes his way, which while true to some extent implies his victory was just luck's doing. Again and again, Goodwin shows how freakishly attuned Lincoln was to events then happening and even those yet to happen. Never one to sit idly by and wait for good things to come magically unprompted, even if he may have at times seemed to some inexplicably unbothered and maddeningly slow to react to unexpected developments, he possessed the sixth sense to know when to proceed with his designs and when not to. After winning Seward, Chase, and Bates over to his side with proxies and flattering letters, and with his Democrat counterpart Stephen Douglas busy defending his moderate platform against radicals in his party, winning the presidency was for Lincoln almost as easy as one-two-three. Then came the decidedly trickier bit of being president.

Incompetent military generals, Southern aggression, marital headaches, Cabinet tensions, international scrutiny, and the slavery question may just be possible to resolve if the problems arose very considerately one after another. It was Lincoln's unlucky situation that they didn't, forcing him to attend to all of them simultaneously. We have a habit of bringing up before-and-after visual comparisons of presidents and marveling at the physical changes for the worse that they underwent during their terms. Graying hair, sunken eyes, and pronounced wrinkle lines are par for the course. Given Lincoln's challenges, it's more surprising to me not that he aged a hundred years in four, but that he didn't keel over and die straightaway of ulcers the first week into his term. A lesser man would be forgivably overcome with homicidal thoughts after dealing with General George McClellan's breathtaking disrespect and cowardice (the war would've been shorter and many needless casualties avoided had he nutted up and overpowered the other side with the Union Army's superior numbers), Mary Todd's financial woes and mood swings, and Chase's unsubtle machinations and lust for the presidential seat. It's to Lincoln's credit those thoughts never seemed to have occurred to him.

Looming over the entire book, the slavery dilemma influenced most decisions everyone made. Even when the conservatives succeeded for a time in convincing people not to push the issue further, it was never completely gone during their musings. The romantic notion that Lincoln one day materialized with an audible pop out of thin air, anti-slavery views already fully rationalized and a desire burning in his guts to ride into battle to there eradicate that evil for now and ever, is a popular misconception I used to entertain half-seriously. In reality, there were less cinematics and more mental gymnastics Lincoln had to perform to justify abolishing slavery within the restrictions set by the Constitution. That it needed justifying at all is, to our modern thinking, not a little remarkable, yet makes an uncomfortable amount of sense. "Northern objections to slavery were based on ideology and sentiment, rather than on the Southern concerns with property, social intercourse, habit, safety, and life itself. The North had nothing tangible to lose." Compromise was the word of the day. Uneasy with slavery to begin with, Lincoln nevertheless trusted in the natural course of things to destroy it if all agreed to contain it to where it already took root instead of spreading it to new lands. That didn't take. Even with the South rebelling in earnest, Lincoln's hands were tied with appeasing the border states, conservatives, and peace Democrats, without the support of whom his presidency would've been short-lived. Outright outlawing the practice was off the table. It fell to Lincoln's political know-how and knack for logical lawyering to navigate the twists and turns of the law well enough to spot a hole through which to wedge in the Emancipation Proclamation, paving the way for the Thirteenth Amendment and "settl[ing] the fate, for all coming time, not only of the millions now in bondage, but of unborn millions to come."

With maps, photos, and references so many their notes take up 120 pages of the book (lulling me again like Adam Hochschild did with King Leopold's Ghost into being excited for more content left ahead), inserted into the main narrative with such surgical certainty I felt snug in Goodwin's more than capable hands, you fast come to see and be permanently agawk at how together she's got her stuff. After counting on one hand the number of times Team of Rivals ever bored me, all five of my fingers would still be accounted for to give you a full-handed slap for raising so absurd a question. Here is a major undertaking not many would dare attempt, let alone accomplish, yet Goodwin has done exactly that, and done so well she makes it look like a breezy walk in the park. Her writing style is straightforward and unobtrusive, giving the characters center stage; her analyses sensible and convincing, deepening your understanding of what before seemed incomprehensible; and her sources exhaustive and well-cited, leaving us in no doubt she made none of this up. If any fault can be found with Goodwin, it may be that she can seem to have come down too hard with the Lincoln fever, already obvious with the book's subtitle, but that criticism loses steam when Goodwin doesn't hold back from showing the man at his most embarrassing (he, assuming they didn't also view his country as theirs, once advocated coaxing the slaves out of it and form a colony elsewhere).

Excepting history teachers and trivia nerds, we have an awful memory. Game-changers are remembered at the expense of minutiae. Historical figures become less corporeal in the public mind the further from the present they get, their more insignificant characteristics buried under the sand of time, out of which only their greater victories stick like so many tips of pyramids. They sport that sheen of legend. Their actions, given context, make them seem suddenly not all that amazing anymore. Hearing the truth about Santa Claus would probably be less disappointing news. Lincoln, immortalized by a towering statue opposite from the Washington Monument, is both figuratively and literally larger than life. Yet Team of Rivals has shown how Lincoln's status in the history books can only be added to, not detracted from, even when it tackles the bad as well as the good. By gathering up multiple viewpoints ranging from journalists and assistants to soldiers and housewives, and by seamlessly stringing together such a wide variety of voices to create what in others' hands would've resulted in incoherent splatter art and in hers has gifted us a master's painting, Goodwin has done maybe not the impossible, but certainly the dastardly difficult, and elevated Lincoln to such a plane I have serious doubts any leader-to-be now or in the future can ever reach. His will be giant shoes to fill.