Lincoln's Mentors

<p><strong>A brilliant and novel examination of how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership</strong></p><p><strong>Abraham Lincoln had less schooling than all but a couple of other presidents and more wisdom than every one of them. In this original insightful book Michael Gerhardt explains how this came to be. -H.W. Brands <em> Wall Street Journal</em></strong><br/></p><p>In 1849 when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield Illinois after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade Lincoln would reenter politics become a leader of the Republican Party win the 1860 presidential election and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?</p><p>As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals Lincoln's reemergence followed the same path he had taken before in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes failures oratory and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately--Henry Clay Andrew Jackson Zachary Taylor John Todd Stuart and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership mastering party politics campaigning conventions understanding and using executive power managing a cabinet speechwriting and oratory and--what would become his most enduring legacy--developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.</p><p>Without these mentors Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer--and without Lincoln the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.</p>