"Carwardine's Lincoln Prize-winning study is not only analytical and smart, it's also delightfully
readableand it will surely emerge as one of the most important Lincoln books to be published this decade."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"No one seriously interested in Lincoln can afford to ignore Carwardine's judicious work."Daniel Walker Howe,
Oxford University

"There is simply no other Lincoln biography like it."Tom Schwartz, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library

Winner of the 2004 Lincoln Prize

This extraordinary biography by one of the most highly regarded historians on the subject examines Lincoln both
as a rising politician and as president. As a defender of national unity, a leader in war, and the emancipator of
slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays ample claim to being the greatest of our presidents.

While pursuing office, Lincoln drew strength from public opinion and from the machinery of his party. As a wartime
president, he recognized the limits as well as the possibilities of power. In his struggle to end slavery, he found
allies in the churches, their humanitarian agencies, and the volunteer Union Army. In illuminating the political talents
that went hand in hand with large and serious moral purpose, Carwardine gives us a fresh, important portrait of the
incomparable Abraham Lincoln.

Richard Carwardine is a Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University and is the first British scholar to be awarded the Lincoln Prize, the largest award in America for nineteenth-century American history. He lives in Oxford.

Dick Hill, named a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine, is one of the most awarded narrators in the business, having earned three Audie Awards and numerous Earphones Awards. In addition to narrating, he has both acted and written for the theater. He and his wife, narrator Susie Breck, live in Michigan.