And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how--and why--he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America. n Meacham has given us the Lincoln for our time.--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. n nWinner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize - Longlisted for the Biographers International Plutarch Award - One of the Best Books of the Year: The Christian Science Monitor, Kirkus Reviews n nA president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. n nAt once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidents--a remote icon--or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln--an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right. n nThis book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans, Lincoln's story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.n