Every so often American Presidents let people know that they are reading a book. When George W. Bush was seen clutching a copy of Andrew Roberts’s History of the English Speaking People, acres of newsprint appeared on this elegant apologia for neo-conservatism. Now his successor in the White House wants us to know that he has a well-thumbed copy of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals; and just in case you missed that, the publishers have helpfully emblazoned the front of the UK paperback edition with the headline ‘The Book that Inspired Barack Obama’.
He could have done much worse. For Team of Rivals is one of the best biographical histories I have read in years. It is a powerful, personal and pacy account of the Lincoln Presidency told through the story of the four men who competed for the nomination at the Republican Party’s first ever Convention in 1860.
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