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Team of Rivals -- April 2007 Book Pick |
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 The Reader's Ink book of the month for April 2007 is Team of Rivals
by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin has a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. She served as a White House Fellow during the Johnson administration and later assisted in the writing of his memoirs. In 1995, Goodwin won the Pulitzer prize for her book on Franklin Roosevelt entitled, No Ordinary Time.
(source: Doris Kearns Goodwin on Wikipedia.)
Publisher Weekly Review:
Pulitzer Prize–winner Goodwin (No Ordinary Time) seeks to illuminate
what she interprets as a miraculous event: Lincoln's smooth (and, in
her view, rather sudden) transition from underwhelming one-term
congressman and prairie lawyer to robust chief executive during a time
of crisis. Goodwin marvels at Lincoln's ability to co-opt three
better-born, better-educated rivals—each of whom had challenged Lincoln
for the 1860 Republican nomination. The three were New York senator
William H. Seward, who became secretary of state; Ohio senator Salmon
P. Chase, who signed on as secretary of the treasury and later was
nominated by Lincoln to be chief justice of the Supreme Court; and
Missouri's "distinguished elder statesman" Edward Bates, who served as
attorney general. This is the "team of rivals" Goodwin's title refers
to.The problem with this interpretation is that the metamorphosis of
Lincoln to Machiavellian master of men that Goodwin presupposes did not
in fact occur overnight only as he approached the grim reality of his
presidency. The press had labeled candidate Lincoln "a fourth-rate
lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar." But East Coast railroad
executives, who had long employed Lincoln at huge prices to defend
their interests as attorney and lobbyist, knew better. Lincoln was a
shrewd political operator and insider long before he entered the White
House—a fact Goodwin underplays. On another front, Goodwin's
spotlighting of the president's three former rivals tends to undercut
that Lincoln's most essential Cabinet-level contacts were not with
Seward, Chase and Bates, but rather with secretaries of war Simon
Cameron and Edwin Stanton, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.
These criticisms aside, Goodwin supplies capable biographies of the
gentlemen on whom she has chosen to focus, and ably highlights the
sometimes tangled dynamics of their "team" within the larger assemblage
of Lincoln's full war cabinet. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a
division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 13 March 2007 )
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