Product Description

A masterful biography of Lincoln that follows his bitter struggle with poverty, his self-made success in business and law, his early disappointing political career, and his leadership as President during one of America's most tumultuous periods.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #450445 in Books
• Published on: 1993-11-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

From Amazon.com
Someone once said that more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other person in history save Jesus and Shakespeare. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the Civil War without getting to know the complex figure of the 16th president. More than any other biographer, Stephen B. Oates brings the plain-talking man from Illinois to life as a canny politician, a doting husband, and a determined wartime leader. Oates has an appealing appreciation for Lincoln's majestic control of the English language, his raw humor, and his undeniable heroism. The final pages, covering Lincoln's death and his legacy, are graceful and moving.

Ingram
This masterful and moving biography follows Lincoln's bitter struggle with poverty, his self-made success in business and law, his early disappointing political career, and his leadership as President during one of America's most turbulent periods. 48 halftone illustrations.

About the Author

Stephen B. Oates is the author of sixteen books, including The Approaching Fury; With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln and Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., the latter two books winning, respectively, the Christopher Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award. They have been translated into several languages.

Oates was a consultant and "talking head" in Ken Burns's Civil War series on PBS, and is a recipient of the Nevins-Freeman Award of the Chicago Civil War Round Table for lifetime achievement in the field of Civil War studies. A teacher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he is now writing the concluding book of the Voices of Storm trilogy, about the years of Reconstruction, 1865-1877.

Customer Reviews

One of the 3 Best 1 Volume Biographies About Lincoln
I have been studying Abraham Lincoln for nearly 40 years. Many Lincoln scholars consider WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE by Stephen B. Oates one of three BEST one-volume biographies of Abraham Lincoln ever written to date. The other two are LINCOLN by David Herbert Donald and ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A BIOGRAPHY by Benjamin P. Thomas.

An excellent biography of an incredibly complex man.
"With Malice Towards None" is a very creditable work and a fine attempt to explain the author's view of Abraham Lincoln. Oates views Lincoln as a genuinely good man, highly ambitious, self-made, and first and foremost: a politician. Like all politicians who are heads of state, Lincoln had to grapple with the issues of his day. In his day, however, the issues were unusually intractable, difficult, and complex, such that the nation was unable to solve them through established institutions. It took an actual Civil War to decide whether slavery in America must go, whether America is first and foremost a union of united States, or whether it was a Union of essentially sovereign single states. These were and are great issues, and the greatness of Lincoln is that he stood in the center of these issues, spent his entire presidency grappling with them, and ultimately, it was his unswerving leadership, not perfect but great, that ultimately led America to resolution of these issues.

Oates shows us that Lincoln was a politician. He wheedled, compromised, and was carried by great events as often as he shaped them. This does nothing to take away from the man who, along with Washington, ranks as doubtless one of our two greatest presidents. While opposing slavery, Lincoln was ready to compromise with it, at least sometimes to some extent. Oates does a good job of explaining this in a non-revisionist way that shows respect to Lincoln and to history.

Oates' writing is clear, and his research thorough. This is not a perfect book in that it is not a complete view of Lincoln. No 400 or so page book about this complicated man could achieve that. On the other hand, Oates portrays Lincoln brilliantly, and with insight, as a gifted leader and politician in an incredibly difficult time.

I would have enjoyed more discussion of some of Lincoln's more extreme actions, his bending (some would say breaking) of the Constitution, and the extremes to which he went to achieve ultimate military victory for the North. Oates does touch on this, but more would have been welcome.

An excellent book about a difficult and complex subject. Recommended.

A decent portrayal of Lincoln, but not a great one
Abraham Lincoln is one of the most written-about men in history. There are scores of biographies, profiles, analyses, everything to do with this great man. Because of this, it is difficult to find a good, comprehensive work that details his life adequately and faithfully. In this book, Stephen B. Oates gives a good representation of Lincoln, giving a pretty good account of his life and not trying to raise the man to deity (as others have done). Despite this, however, there are several flaws in this book that make it only of average quality.

Oates commits what I consider to be the unpardonable sin in biography--he attempts to get inside Lincoln's head. One of the necessary qualities of a good biographer is that he or she should not try to psychoanalyze the subject, should not assume he knows what was going on inside the subject's head, and should certainly not embellish the account with a bunch of supposed conversations and feelings which are more the fabrication of the author than the feelings of the subject. Oates breaks all of these rules.

The most annoying thing about the book is that Oates will paraphrase what he thinks Lincoln said. He may give a short quotation, but then he closes the quote and proceeds to adlib what he assumes Lincoln would say, speaking in the first person as though he were the President himself. He uses the pronoun 'I' in his own narrative, when he should be using 'he.' If you can get over Oates pretending to speak for Lincoln himself throughout most of the book, the rest of the account is pretty decent. But I had a hard time getting past that.

For a 400 or so page biography, this book covers the subject moderately well, though not excellently. Many men, such as Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, or Admiral Farragut, are barely mentioned, as if Lincoln had nothing to do with them at all. It would have added greatly to the account to have a more detailed description of the Civil War, and about Lincoln's counterparts in the South (such as Davis). Still, this is a pretty good book, though far from definitive in any way. With the mountains of work available on this great man, there's got to be something better out there.