Biography & Autobiography : Presidents & Heads of State

In this wonderfully evocative volume, following the outstanding success of The Hornet's Nest, Christmas in Plains, and his classic, An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter writes about the things that matter most, the simple relaxed days and nights that he has enjoyed with family and friends through the years and across generations. more...

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An Unfinished Life is the first major, single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. Drawing upon previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives to tell Kennedy's story, An Unfinishe more...

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Donald focuses on six figures who were undoubtedly close to Lincoln and who have left full, intimate records of their associations: Joshua F. Speed, William H. Herndon, Orville H. Browning, William H. Seward, John Hay, and John G. Nicolay. Each saw a different side of Lincoln, but, taken together, their accounts tell much about Lincoln's difficulty in making and holding intimate friendships. The evidence is overwhelming that few if any of these and other friends were on intimate terms with Lincoln. Those who knew him best came to realize that behind the mask of affability, behind the facade of his endless humorous anecdotes, Lincoln maintained an inviolable reserve. Herndon found him "incommunicative-silent, reticent-secretive, the most shut-mouthed man" who ever lived. This book is divided into these six portraits-six friendships that Lincoln had through his life-starting with his stepbrother, Dennis Hanks; but his childhood was isolated and lonely and he described himself as "friendless and uneducated" after his mother died and the family moved. As a young man, he became friends with Joshua Speed when he arrived in Springfield. They remained friends and political allies until Speed went back home to Kentucky. Lincoln tried to persuade Speed to accompany him to Washington, but in fact he arrived as president-elect without any staff and without a single intimate friend. Next was William Herndon, his law partner, who wrote about him but did not claim an intimacy he had not enjoyed. Orville Browning, appointed to fill out Stephen Douglas' term, became Lincoln's confidant, but the closeness ended when Lincoln twice passed over Browning for the Supreme Court and when Browning disagreed with his politics and his conduct of the war. William Seward was his best friend in the extremely rambunctious cabinet, but very definitely the junior man. Lincoln did not have a true peer. His much younger secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, were the t more...

Price: $11.99