Top Highlights

• More accustomed to relying upon himself to shape events, he took the greatest control of the process leading up to the nomination, displaying a fierce ambition, an exceptional political acumen, and a wide range of emotional strengths, forged in the crucible of personal hardship, that took his unsuspecting rivals by surprise. That Lincoln, after win...
• Every member of this administration was better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life than Lincoln.
• Lincoln possessed an uncanny understanding of his shifting moods, a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate sadness and stress.
• No sooner had he completed his studies than he berated himself for squandering the opportunity: “Especially do I regret that I spent so much of my time in reading novels and other light works,” he told a younger student. “They may impart a little brilliancy to the imagination but at length, like an intoxicating draught, they enfeeble and deaden the...
• Years later, Lincoln wrote a letter of condolence to Fanny McCullough, a young girl who had lost her father in the Civil War. “It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and,...