Doris Kearns Goodwin: Team of Rivals

Excellent book. Four stars at least. My only quibble is there is too much 'woman stuff' (kids, clothes, decorations) and an almost complete trivializing of the banking (greenback) issue. The creation of money out of thin air is not a trivial issue and many believe, myself among them, that Lincoln's assassination was engineered by bankers as punishment for his 'usurping' banker's jealously guarded prerogative of creating money out of thin air. Garfield (re silver) and Kennedy (re Fed) would be next.

That aside, I highly recommend this book, especially for any budding politician who wants to study Lincoln's lesson on timing as is so well described by Goodwin.