The Rise of Abraham Lincoln

One Man Great Enough
Abraham Lincoln's Road to Civil War
John C. Waugh (2007)

Having found John C. Waugh's earlier book on Lincoln's re-election in 1864 engaging, I picked up his book on Lincoln's political development. A solid book it is. The book traces the life of Lincoln through his own words wherever possible, placing the reader in the context of the time wherever possible. You follow Lincoln through his adolescent wanderings, his law school education, his early passion for Whig politics, right up the point when the Kansas-Nebraska Act voids the Missouri Compromise and Lincoln realizes that the status quo isn't sustainable -- that "[a] house divided against itself cannot stand". Waugh pulls no punches about the impact this realization, and Lincoln's steadfast commitment to being honest with his contemporaries about it, have on him. The book is not a whitewash, either; you feel Lincoln's strangeness.