Why did Marcia love this book?
Gripping, heartbreakingly beautiful storytelling by one of our most brilliant historians about Abraham Lincoln, who is referenced to the point of cliché in American politics, but poorly (or incompletely) understood.
I read/listened to this book on a long overseas assignment, with lots of solitary time, hikes, and travel—some of it by boat. This book was the unifying thread that ran through this trip.
Reading it was a sort of voyage itself, the kind that offers perspective and at the end, made me wiser, clearer, and somehow a better citizen. It could have been a too heavy subject, but the book is written with inviting warmth.
It inspired hours of contemplation about our country and its painful history of slavery, and the flawed, visionary, and deeply human 16th president who ended it.
2 authors picked And There Was Light as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how—and why—he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America.
“Meacham has given us the Lincoln for our time.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize • Longlisted for the Biographers International Plutarch Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Christian Science Monitor, Kirkus Reviews
A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and…