A review by nancyflanagan
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

5.0

Read it after seeing "Lincoln," mostly to fill in the cracks, answer the questions raised by the film.

Doris Kearns Goodwin makes history go down easy, with a fluid, easy to follow writing style and a unique, compare/contrast way of setting up the pillars of Lincoln's cabinet with his own impoverished life. You get the whole story of his life, but not in a year-by-year linear timeline; Kearns Goodwin understands context better than other biographers.

I learned many things,most importantly how and why Lincoln used his folksiness to soften and wield that "immense power." Genius. We haven't seen his life since.