Description: "At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen in popular minds as the greatest of American presidents--a remote icon--or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This ... portrait gives us a very human Lincoln--an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment was essential to the story of justice in America. Here is the Lincoln who, as a boy, was steeped in the sermons of emancipation by Baptist preachers; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him light to see the right. This 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 at Ford's Theater on Good Friday 1865: his rise, his self-education through reading, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end"--
Review Quotes: "Meacham's new Lincoln is not just a text; it is an event . . . It is thoroughly researched and highly readable, written with all the artful craftsmanship of a veteran writer . . . As a biographer, [Meacham] is exquisitely attuned to the resonances between twenty-first century polarization and the life of 'a president who led a divided country' a century and a half ago."--The Washington Post
"Meacham's meticulously researched portrait reveals a man who, while riddled with imperfections and inconsistencies, genuinely believed in the human instinct to do good. . . . Meacham zeros in on Lincoln the human being."--The New York Times Book Review "Luminous . . . Make room for [this book] at the forefront of the Lincoln canon. For here is Lincoln in all his familiar complexity--and yet freshly conceived."--The Boston Globe "Excellent . . . Meacham's fine account of America's greatest president delivers a close-up that captures--wart and all--why Lincoln's political sensibilities and moral vision were, like the Union itself, indivisible."--Chicago Tribune "Sweeping, elegantly written . . . a welcome addition to the vast library of work on the 16th president."--The Christian Science Monitor "And There Was Light brilliantly interweaves the best of gripping narrative history with a deeper search for the complex interplay among morality, politics, and power in a life, in a democracy, and in an America ripped apart over slavery."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Written with wisdom and grace, his story of Lincoln's complex moral journey to Emancipation mirrors America's long quest to live up to its founding ideals."--Doris Kearns Goodwin "With his singular gift for compelling narrative and groundbreaking analysis, Jon Meacham illuminates not only Lincoln and his times but, just as much, the troubled society that we live in today."--Michael Beschloss "Jon Meacham has given us a Lincoln for our perilous times, a story in which slavery and racism are not an afterthought. With the elegance of his pen and the power of story, Meacham draws a portrait of a complex man who answered the call of history."--Eddie S. Glaude, Jr."Meacham's Lincoln is no prophet or saint, but no prophet or saint could have accomplished what he did."--Sean Wilentz
"A masterful, highly readable biography . . . In an era when autocracy is on the march, this timely book sheds a bright light on Lincoln's role as a paladin and vindicator of democracy."--Michael Burlingame "So much more than another account of Abraham Lincoln's life, Jon Meacham's profound new biography dives into Lincoln's very soul, and the result is one of the most compelling and absorbing portraits ever crafted."--Harold Holzer "An essential, eminently readable volume for anyone interested in Lincoln and his era."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"For Meacham, Lincoln is above all 'an example of how even the most imperfect of peoples . . . can bend the arc of the universe toward justice. . . . Richly detailed and gracefully written."--Publishers Weekly, starred review