An elegantly crafted epic that is as gripping of a read as a novel: history can be eminently entertaining. I heard Goodwin interviewed on Radio West and she describes researching this book for 10 years. She utilizes a richness of primary sources to give the reader the opportunity to know well not just Lincoln but the many who surrounded him.

I dreaded reaching the last pages of this book--there was only one way for it to end. The death of Lincoln, although foreshadowed, comes as abruptly in this account as I am sure it did for those there. And, having become intimately acquainted with those close to Lincoln, the evoked emotion is not only at the death of great leader just when the country most relied on his magnanimity to repair and reconstruct a war-torn land, but for those whose grief was inconsolable at that time.