Best american political biographies

• Team of Rivals

• The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
• By: Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
• Length: 41 hrs and 32 mins
• Unabridged

• Overall

• Performance

• Story

On May 18, , William H. Seward, Salmon P. jakt, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry. Throughout the turbulent s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Beautiful, Heartbreaking, and Informative

• By JJ on

Thank you for this list of political biographies from the United States. What do you look for in biography? Are you seeking to understand the bigger picture in the U.S.—a historical period or a governmental body via an individual’s story—or should a biography be more of a character study?

It’s definitely both. You can learn a lot about history through biography. For example, one of the books on my list is Donald Rumsfeld’s autobiography. He started in politics during the Eisenhower era. He was 30 years old, in He wrote this book in after he had stepped down as Secretary of Defense, so there was a solid 50 years there where he was, to varying degrees, at the center of U.S. politics.

So you can, incidentally, learn a lot about history, but I mainly look for a subject I’m really fascinated with. It’s less the time or the broad sweep of historical perspective, and more: is this person interesting?

Through Barack Obama’s book, I felt I

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