the 1st in a sweeping, multi-volume heritage of Abraham Lincoln—from his vague beginnings to his presidency, demise, and the overthrow of his post-Civil warfare plan of reconciliation—“engaging and informative and…thought-provoking” (The Christian technological know-how Monitor).

From his formative years as a voracious newspaper reader, Abraham Lincoln turned a loose philosopher, studying Tom Paine, in addition to Shakespeare and the Bible. within the “fascinating” (Booklist, starred overview) A Self-Made Man, Sidney Blumenthal finds how Lincoln’s antislavery pondering started in his formative years in backwoods Kentucky and Indiana. Intensely bold, he held political aspirations from his earliest years. but he used to be a socially awkward suitor who had a frightened breakdown over his lack of ability to accommodate the other intercourse. His marriage to the higher classification Mary Todd used to be the most important to his social aspirations and his political profession. “The Lincoln of Blumenthal’s pen is…a courageous innovative dealing with racist attacks on his faith, ethnicity, and extremely legitimacy that echo the anti-Obama birther movement….Blumenthal takes the wily pol of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals and is going deeper, discovering a Vulcan common sense and House of Cards ruthlessness” (The Washingtonian).

Based on prodigious learn of Lincoln’s checklist, and of the interval and its major avid gamers, Blumenthal’s powerful biography displays either Lincoln’s time and the fight that consumes our personal political debate. this primary quantity lines Lincoln from his start in 1809 via his schooling within the political arts, upward push to the Congress, and fall into the desert from which he emerged because the guy we realize as Abraham Lincoln. “Splendid…no it is easy to come clear of examining A Self-Made Man…without eagerly watching for the resultant volumes.” (Washington Monthly).