Synopses & Reviews
"The portrait is reasoned, judicious, straightforward and utterly convincing."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
In this profoundly moving work of epic proportion and intense human sympathy, Abraham Lincoln is observed by his loved ones, his rivals, and his future assassins. In this brilliantly realized, vividly imagined work of fiction, Gore Vidal gives us a portrait of America's great president that is at once intimate and public, stark and complex, and that will become for future generations the living Lincoln, the definitive Lincoln.
"Richly entertaining....For the general reader the elegant explication of the issues of the day gives hearty satisfaction: history lessons with the blood still hot."
THE WASHINGTON POST
Synopsis
In this profoundly moving work of epic proportion and intense human sympathy, Abraham Lincoln is observed by his loved ones, his rivals, and his future assassins. Isolated in the ramshackle White House in the center of a pro-slavery city, Lincoln presides over a government that is itself fragmented. Even Lincoln's fellow Republicans treat him with contempt, accuse him of weakness and vacillation, then of highhandedness and dictatorship. Vidal gives us a portrait of America's great president that is at once intimate and public, stark and complex, and that will become for future generations the living Lincoln, the definitive Lincoln.