Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really interesting, but too long. I saw lots of places it could have been edited down. (Though it's not really 900 pages. It's about 750 pages, plus about 150 pages of index.)

The abolitionists are the heroes of this book, and of American history. I didn't know much about Secretary of State William Seward or Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase previous to reading about them about here. My favorite parts were the meetings with Douglass Frederick. I have read Frederick's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and My Escape from Slavery but I didn't know about these amazing meetings with Lincoln. I'm glad I read his autobiography first, because then when I read about the meetings, I could more fully grasp their significance. These meetings are probably the happiest parts of the book.

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