Friendships never came easy for a man as private and as mysterious as Abraham Lincoln. This highly original book offers a new and enlightening way of looking at Lincoln by observing how he dealt with his friends and close associates. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Donald delivers a highly readable portrait of Lincoln's closest friendships in a volume that nicely complements his preeminent biography of our 16th president. Donald's focus is on six key players: Joshua Speed, William H. Herndon, Orville H. Browning, William H. Seward and the president's private secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. With regard to the young Springfield entrepreneur Speed, Donald astutely dismantles the so-called "evidence" for a homoerotic relationship, pointing out that during the four years Speed and Lincoln shared a room and a bed (then a common practice among budget-conscious young men) both were quite energetically involved in quests for wives. Interestingly, no less than three of the six friends delineated by Donald also became Lincoln's biographers. William H. Herndon-about whom Donald has previously written a book-started out as Lincoln's law partner in the fall of 1844 and wound up doing vital, sometimes scandalous, sometimes spurious research culminating in a seminal biography published in 1889. The work of Nicolay and Hay was primarily intended to refute much of Herndon's scandalous accounts regarding Lincoln's lineage, frontier romances and unhappy marriage. Perhaps the most complex and informative of Donald's portraits is that of Orville Browning, a longtime Springfield associate and fellow attorney who served briefly as senator from Illinois during Lincoln's first term and whom Lincoln passed over no less than three times when given the opportunity to nominate him to the Supreme Court. Friendship had its limits. Agent, John Taylor Williams. (Nov. 10) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Donald (emeritus, Harvard) casts a fascinating portrait of Lincoln and his friends and reconsiders much Lincoln lore in this wholly original study. Borrowing from Aristotle's typology of friendship, the author discovers that Lincoln had many "enjoyable" and "useful" friendships but few "complete" ones wherein he might share hopes, wishes, ideas, fears, and intimacies. By Donald's reckoning, Lincoln was an intensely private man, almost unknowable to his friends and still elusive to biographers. Donald looks closely at six friendships from Lincoln's early days as a lawyer to his last days as President and concludes that in almost all cases Lincoln adopted a mentoring relationship. Donald also explores issues of homosexuality, love and marriage, wartime policy, and more and concludes that Lincoln's lack of close friendships before his presidency hampered his ability to manage the secession crisis, rely on his cabinet, or pick his vice president in 1864. The self-assured Lincoln acted on his own ideas, instincts, and interests in deciding policy, which sometimes led to tactical errors in politics and war but in the end saved the Union and pointed the nation to a new birth of freedom. A book of rare clarity, intelligence, and relevance for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/03.]-Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian David Herbert Donald was born October 1, 1920 in Goodman, Miss. He married Aida DiPace in 1955, they had one child, Bruce Randall. He received an A.B. in 1941 from Millsaps College; an A.M. in 1942, and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1946.

Donald has been an associate professor of history at Smith College and a professor of history at Columbia University; Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University. He was also Harry C. Warren Professor of American History, chair of the graduate program in American civilization, and professor emeritus at Harvard University.

Much of Donald's work involves exploring and interpreting the American Civil War and its central figure, Abraham Lincoln. Some recent works includes Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, Lincoln, and Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 1996. He received Pulitzer Prizes in biography for both Charles Sumner and Look Homeward.

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Preface
I "A Strange, Friendless, Uneducated, Penniless Boy"
II "He Disclosed His Whole Heart To Me"
III "I Could Read His Secrets"
IV "A Close, Warm, And Sincere Friendship"
V "Beyond The Pale Of Human Envy"
VI "Abraham Rex"
Afterword
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

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