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| Author: David Herbert Donald
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
Buy Used: $4.27
You Save: $15.73 (79%)
New (39) Used (73) Collectible (2) from $4.27
Avg. Customer Rating:  105 reviews
Sales Rank: 3264
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Touchstone Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 720
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 068482535X
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN: 9780684825359
ASIN: 068482535X
Publication Date: November 5, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great Research April 5, 2008
Well written book with great detail. The depth of research must have been great to give this reader a special feel for each progression of Lincoln's amazing journey though life. I'm really enjoying this book.
 Adequate at Best February 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
After hearing all of the hype about this Lincoln bio I finally got around to reading it. OK, I am spoiled, I read Sandburg's bio and it is hard to find anything close to that-certainly not in this book. To sum up my feelings, I don't know Lincoln any better after reading this than before. Prof. Donald misses the mark and I think he is somewhat awestruck that he can't seem to get any deeper. It is well researched and well written, but a bio needs much more.
Here was a man with barely any formal education, not particularly succesful as a politician, elected over many who who knew they could do better and then the nation splits apart into Civil War. Not only did he face the undaunted task of trying to hold the nation together, but learn to be a general of sort, let alone his home life. Other bios show how Lincoln rose to the challenge to hold our nation together and finally find the right general, Grant, and become probably our greatest president.
Somehow, Donald's book does not do it for me.
He was less, and more, than we thought. January 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In giving this book five stars, it is easy to confuse the book with its subject. Who doesn't love Lincoln? (Well, I guess there are some, but there are even people who don't like Bob Seger.) Like many people, particularly those (like me) who grew up right in the heart of the Lincoln country of Central Illinois, I thought that I knew Lincoln, but there is a feeling that most of what I knew was mythic legend rather than facts. The biographies of Lincoln are many, and the classic ones are multi-volume and would take years to digest. Donald has given the English-speaking world the gift of condensing all of that into a thorough and modern account that can be easily consumed, and maybe leave the reader healthily interesed in more.
The book literally begins with what little we know of Lincoln's birth, and ends just moments after his untimely death. The entire singular focus of the book is Lincoln. Precious little is devoted to any detail outside of Lincoln's life, so some prior elementary knowledge of Lincoln's place and times (including the Civil War) would be helpful. I think that the one deviation from Lincoln that I noticed was on the topic of Booth and his tragic plot to kidnap and, as it eventually turned out, to kill the President. Other than that, the reader is shown the world and its events as Lincoln saw and knew them, for the most part. I felt that there was enormous and significant gaps in the narrative in places, but it was also obvious to me that the gaps are the result of what we don't know about Lincoln; after all, for most of his life, Lincoln was not a historical figure, and he went about his life and career without keeping minute records of it, just as we all do. What we know of his early life (birth in Kentucky, the surprisingly many years that he spent in the wilderness of Southern Indiana as a young boy, and the New Salem years) we gather from the interviews and biographical accounts that were collected after he was elected President and the world had an interest in these otherwise forgotten facts. We can know much about his adulthood from the accounts of his law partners, fellow legislators, and others who worked and lived with him, and who no doubt recorded their thoughts and memories after it was clear that they had walked with one of history's true giants. Given the sometimes thin detail, I noticed that nowhere in the book were the smallest things noted with more triviality than in the few days between the end of the War (April 9th) and his murder (April 14th/15th). Clearly, those ironically joyous days became more important to the eyewitnesses, and every detail was recorded for posterity. So, whereas there are many important events of which we know little (say, the deliverance of the Gettysburg Address), in the final days and hours of Lincoln's life, we know almost every quip, word, and gesture that he produced. It is precious information, but also sad to reflect on.
Like other reviewers here, I was astonished to learn of the evolution of the man. His country beginnings cannot be overstated: he began life with absolutely no advantage whatsoever, except for the very chemistry that drove him to become truly a masterful President. In one of the book's (that is, the historical record's) many gaps, I missed the force that drove him to leap into his successful law career, but looking back we can see that he parlayed a skill for analysis, speech, and human manipulation into a political career that catapulated him into the White House. This was a time in the young country when such things could be accomplished - even by rough-hewn country lawyers from the "West." The reader also sees his evolution from an inexperienced executive who has the very future of the Union on his shoulders, and whose political mistakes and challenges were as many as they were life-crushing, into a shrewd master of not only the Presidency but the known political world as well.
I was surprised to find that there were places in the book where I find Lincoln to be unlikeable. His contempt of his father is hard to understand, as was his sophomoric early philosophy of "Reason." He certainly seems like he would have been a neat guy to know (major understatement), but he also seems to have been sometimes cold, too driven by his career and politics, and a bit of a jerk to those he could not tolerate (and there were many). Was he "Honest Abe" who would walk a mile to return a few pennies change? Yes, I guess so, but he was not a pushover.
Anyway, this is a review of the book and not the man. Great book on a greater subject. I like what Donald has done: put together the singular and readable biography, and presented one of history's top subjects without too much editorializing or sentiment. Having now read it, I cannot imagine being an American and not doing so.
Now He Belongs to the Ages January 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Dr. Donald's book is an excellent one volume biography of our greatest President, an historical figure of truly Biblical stature, who led the American people through the epochal struggle that ended the practice of human slavery in this country. It should be required reading.
Great Lincoln Book you only need two books January 11, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Read Leadership: Past, Present & Future by Carlos M. Rivera and then read this book. You will love both books.
5 Stars
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