Gabriel Riekhof's Reviews > Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

I’m usually not one to write this kind of review, but I feel compelled to urge you to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “A Team of Rivals” which details Lincoln’s life and political genius. I know this is an uphill task considering it’s non-fiction, and that it’s a giant hill, coming in at nearly 1,000 pages, but more than any other book I have ever read, the view from the top is beautiful and complete.

Goodwin details not only Lincoln’s life, but the life of three of his closest rivals: Salmon Chase, William Seward, and Edward Bates (who is from Missouri, if you can imagine it). The first fifth or so of the book is dedicated to this cause until their fates all became interwoven at the Republican National Convention in 1860, which, as you know, nominated Abraham Lincoln, in an upset of Seward.

The rest of the book - that reads like a novel - lays out Lincoln’s masterful political work throughout his presidency. Even better, Goodwin helps you understand that the root of his political mastery came from his inhuman ability to swallow pride while perfectly balancing appeasement and authority to get the most out of his colleagues. The most remarkable part of him, which was his unlimited capacity for forgiveness, was unmatched.

By the end of the book, Goodwin facilitates such a profound understanding of the president that it is hard not to confuse it with friendship. In fact, it’s not unlike the attachment you feel to your favorite fictional character in all the stories you’ve read more than once – the difference here being that Goodwin’s work comes from exhausting reading and relating of documents written 150 years ago. Even now, I catch myself typing Lincoln’s skills and accomplishments in present tense, as if my new-found friend was living and breathing as much as you or I, and the feelings invoked when Lincoln’s inescapable assassination filled the lines I was reading helped me understand, better than ever, the depth of the mourning that the reunited nation now found themselves in.

*If you're like me and want to listen to an audiobook on the way to and from work, the audiobook is wonderful. The narrator does this book justice, which is a lot considering how highly I regard it.