Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Good Books rating 4.2
Technical:
- ID: 157
- Added: 2025-09-03
- Updated: 2025-09-03
- ISBN: 9780684824901
- Publisher: Simon and Schuster
- Published: 2005-10-25
- Reviews: 3
An analysis of Abraham Lincoln's political talents identifies the character strengths and abilities that enabled his successful election, in an account that also describes how he used the same abilities to rally former opponents in winning the Civil War.
Reviews
Pull quotes
- This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men.
- The tactics of the kind of people who would defend slavery and smear Lincoln seem familiar in many ways.
- ‘Team of Rivals’ is a remarkable achievement in historical scholarship.
Pull quotes
- Goodwin’s treatment of the volatile Mary Lincoln is the most balanced I have encountered.
- Goodwin’s frequent focus on this group of men enhances the reader’s understanding of events.
- She describes the audacious plot to simultaneously assassinate Lincoln, his vice president and Secretary of State Seward far better than any other biography I’ve read.
Pull quotes
- Goodwin supplies capable biographies of the gentlemen on whom she has chosen to focus.
- The metamorphosis of Lincoln to Machiavellian master of men did not in fact occur overnight.
- Goodwin’s spotlighting of the president's three former rivals tends to undercut that Lincoln's most essential Cabinet-level contacts were not with Seward, Chase and Bates.