In my meager estimation, Team of Rivals is an unparalleled work of biography. It's easy to write powerful work when your subject is Lincoln, but Goodwin has found an approach that not only gives great new insight into her subject, but also gives her potent writing a framework which can be at once both a forceful narrative and an intellectual stimulant. She achieves her focus on Lincoln's greatness by doing the counter-intuitive act of broadening her scope and interweaving Lincoln's biography with biographies of his contemporaries.I must say, seeing Lincoln side by side with Seward, Chase, Stanton, and others--many of whom would be considered great men even if they weren't a part of Lincoln's cabinet--truly makes Lincoln's supremacy express itself, as Tolstoy points out "in his peculiar moral power and in his greatness of character." I've never been so inspired.
Of the many qualities that Lincoln exhibited, I must say his even handed critical thinking approach is the one I found to be most helpful. Largely because reading about it gave words to something I've tried to live out in my own life. He really had an impressive ability to cling to what he believed is true while expressing himself in a way that gave a chance to people on all sides and ideologies to appreciate or see the benefits of his propositions.
I've got Carwardine's Lincoln: Life of Purpose and Power from the library and am half way through it. I wasn't going to embark on more Lincoln so soon after Goodwin's long opus, but after being so moved by Goodwin's writing and then reading this review last week, I feel compelled to give a run at Carwardine. Carwardine's work is really impressive, and had I read it before reading Rivals, I probably would have put it along side of Guelzo's Redeemer President as the best a Lincoln bio could be. But Goodwin proves that one can't really claim to have probed the depths of a person's psyche unless they've explored the people around them.
This spring I watched the mockumentary CSA; it was after watching that mockumentary that I bumped Team of Rivals back towards the top of my reading list. I'm also glad I saw CSA (and read Confederates in the Attic) prior to reading this book since Goodwin is so forceful in the righteousness of Lincoln's convictions that I think if I were to read Confederates today I would probably be even more offended by southern sympathizers or find CSA's revisionism to be even harder to laugh at.
Finally, it was a great book to read to help get a firm grasp on the moral and economic principles that the Republican party was founded on. Carwardine's book delves more into the religious influences than Goodwin does, but even so, Goodwin's portrait of this powerful persona who essentially made the Republican party into a via political party that has survived almost 150 years since his election, is really helpful at a time like this. (unfortunately, it's helpful because I'm now able to clearly identify why some of the most prominent Republicans really have no philosophical right to use the same label Lincoln worked hard to forge.)
Finally, it was a great book to read to help get a firm grasp on the moral and economic principles that the Republican party was founded on. Carwardine's book delves more into the religious influences than Goodwin does, but even so, Goodwin's portrait of this powerful persona who essentially made the Republican party into a via political party that has survived almost 150 years since his election, is really helpful at a time like this. (unfortunately, it's helpful because I'm now able to clearly identify why some of the most prominent Republicans really have no philosophical right to use the same label Lincoln worked hard to forge.)
