Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a book by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin published in 2005. The book is a biographical portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his Cabinet from 1861 to 1865. Three of his Cabinet members had previously run against Lincoln in the 1860 election: Attorney General Edward Bates, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of State William H. Seward. The book focuses on Lincoln's mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to abolition and victory in the US Civil War.
While consulting on a Steven Spielberg project in 1999, Goodwin told Spielberg she was planning to write Team of Rivals, and Spielberg immediately told her he wanted the film rights. DreamWorks finalized the deal in 2001 and the film has been in pre-production since. Daniel Day-Lewis agreed to play Abraham Lincoln after Liam Neeson withdrew from the project in 2010 after being attached from the start; with Sally Field playing Mary Todd Lincoln. The screenplay was written by Tony Kushner. Filming began on October 17, 2011, and ended on December 19, 2011. The film will be released nationwide on November 16, 2012.
Yes, that is right, I read a contemporary (2005) book!
And it is a nonfiction book (to boot)!
But, yes, the topic is truly classic.
I read the book; have not yet seen the movie.
Oldest and husband saw it and said it was excellent.
The movie is much narrower in scope than the book.
This book was a daunting task, 36 discs/42 hours. That is about 70 minutes per disc.
I tried to think of the longest book I have read recently. Bleak House (Dickens) came to mind. I looked it up and it was 29 discs at 33 hours.
I tried to pace myself at two discs per day, 7 days a week. That is 140 minutes per day. Between driving, housework, waiting, shopping, I have 140 minutes most days. No, it didn't happen EVERY single day, because Thanksgiving was in there, but it did happen almost every day. And a couple days I had time for more than 2 discs. So, I finished in about 20 days.
That is a long time, for me, on the same book. But that is also pretty quick work for this volume. I ran into another woman who read it, and she said it took her three full weeks (also) of very concentrated effort. So she and I were pretty much at the same pace.
I have always been interested in Lincoln. I have visited (I think) all of his memorial sites in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Washington DC. I would not say Lincoln is a hobby of mine.
But I probably read all the Lincoln books on the shelf when I was in 6th grade and read the whole biography/autobiography section of the school library. I think I remember reading Lincoln (1985) by Gore Vidal, but that book is actually historical fiction.
I was a little worried Team of Rivals was going to read like a history text book. It does not read like a text. Yes there is a LOT of data in it. The book is written so all the data is interesting and there is a definite story. The data is woven well.
The first four discs alternate between introducing Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, William H. Seward, and Abraham Lincoln. This section of the book talks about all four of these families, how these men were raised, educated, wedded, established. There is a nice amount of information on these men's wives and children and households. The reader is given an interesting overview.
Lincoln's childhood is given as a very brief overview. More time is spent on his early adult years. And then the book really dives into his law practice, his start in politics, his presidential run and the presidency itself (which is all about the Civil War).
Slightly more information is given on Lincoln (vs the other three men on the team) as the book progresses. But not by much. The topic is the TEAM, not Lincoln as an individual.
I thought this was an excellent book. Even though there are a lot of characters and data, Goodwin did a good job in staying focused and writing an interwoven story.
I knew much of the Lincoln history. But I did not know most of the cabinet history.
Goodwin referenced her sources in a friendly, conversational way all the way through the book. An example is "in a letter to her father, Kate wrote . . .".
I also loved her asides to the modern reader. When she talked about Lincoln sleeping with his roommates, she explained how that was typical in that time frame and why she did not think there was anything sexual in it from their writings/records of the time. In other words, she knew that was where our minds were going to go, and she answered it.
PS -
My husband is going to listen to this book next. He has listened to a lot of other non-fiction that he really enjoyed. As I talked about this book (no spoiler worries in reading historical books!) as I read, he kept asking me what year? and I never knew. So, I think he reads with a historical calendar in mind, and obviously I do not.
