I have not finished this prize-winning book yet, (749 pages of text), but I cannot put it down.  So I veer from my usual custom of recommending good stories found here in these archives to tell you about one of the most significant and readable books that I have read in a very long time.

The New York Times said of this book, "An elegant, incisive study of Lincoln and leading members of his cabinet that will appeal to experts as well as to those whose knowledge of Lincoln is an amalgam of high school history and popular mythology...Goodwin has brilliantly described how Lincoln forged a team that preserved a nation and freed America from the curse of slavery."  My own Portland, Oregon newspaper, The Oregonian, said "Team of Rivals is one of the most compulsively readable books of history for a general audience to come along in a long time.  An engagingly intimate look at Lincoln's private life and public actions, the book convincingly brings to life this man who may have been the most extraordinary individual in American history."

This book might be more meaningful to its American readers, laying bare as it does the complicated history of race relations that led to the American Civil War, the deep and all-pervading roots of the struggle to make America truly a nation where all people are considered equal, an effort that persists to this very day.  I find it emotionally hard to read, seeing what should have been taken for granted -- the abolition of slavery -- debated and argued so rigorously and rancorously for decades and generations, while unimaginable suffering was going on.

The story is presented as not only the story of our sixteenth president and his life from backwoods Kentucky to the presidency, the Civil War, the emancipation of the slaves, and finally his death at the hand of an assassin.  It is also the intimate story of dozens of other men and women who were participants in this great drama.  In the era before telephones and electronics, communication was all written --  in letters, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets reprinting important speeches distributed to the general public.  These resources survive to the present day, revealing what was in the hearts and minds of the people who lived and acted during the nineteenth century of of American history.  They are liberally quoted throughout the book.

Yes, what I knew about Abraham Lincoln and the struggle against slavery was what I had learned in school classrooms, as the review in The New York Times (quoted above) suggested,  never so detailed and in-depth as what I am learning from this book.  I heartily recommend that all American readers (and others also, if they wish, but especially the Americans) go to their public library and check out this book.  Don't say that you have no time to read it -- when it is in your hands and you turn to the first page, you will find the time.