The year in books #4: Team of Rivals

I went through my archives to check which number I'm on and was astounded to realize it took me an entire month following Shades of Grey to read another book. In my defense, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is 757 pages long. We aren't talking about sissy pages, either; these are vast sheets of dessicated vegetable pulp containing dense lines of prose.

In all honesty, I couldn't be more pleased with the length of the book. It is a brilliantly written biography of Abraham Lincoln that moves slowly enough and deeply enough that it felt like re-emerging from the 19th century when I put the book down. At the same time, it was paced quickly enough to never lose the sense of narrative drive and suspense that is so rare in academic writing. And have no doubt; this is an academic work, with 121 pages of footnotes (my only complaint is that those footnotes are not cited in the main text; it is evidently left as an exercise for the reader to count the quotes in a chapter in order to arrive at the correct citation).

The opening section of the book tells the stories of Lincoln and the men who would compete against him for the Republican presidential nomination and later became members of his cabinet; Edward Bates, Salmon Chase and William Seward. Once Lincoln's nomination has been secured, a relatively short section describes the actual campaign (which I was surprised to discover had four nominees; two from the south and two from the north), with the remainder of the story following the course of the Lincoln presidency, whose beginning and end coincided almost exactly with those of the Civil War.

My favorite aspect of this book, as I wrote above, was that it left me feeling as though I were actually experiencing the America of the 1860s as I read it. It left me feeling a very strong sense of Abraham Lincoln, as well; who he was, what motivated him, and how he saw himself and was seen by others.

If you have any interest in 19th century American history, Abraham Lincoln, the history of slavery in America or the institution of the presidency, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book. I've never read a better biography, and I can think of only one or two history books that I've enjoyed as much as this one.