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Article: He felt thy pain: empathy was Lincoln's secret political weapon.(On Political Books)(Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Washington Monthly
- Article date:
- March 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Washington Monthly Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln By Doris Kearns Goodwin Simon & Schuster, $35.00
We Americans somehow man-age to make a maximum hero out of Abraham Lincoln, a politician if there ever was one, at the same time we hold a heavy negative stereotype of "politicians" and "politics." In the immense popular legend that Lincoln has become, and in the endless outpouring of books, his life story and his personality often seem to upstage and obscure the "political" accomplishment that made his life story worth telling and his personality worth examining. We tend to lose the political forest for the biographical log cabins.
Doris Kearns ...