This is an excellent short biography of Lincoln. As a '100 essential' book, however, I was expecting to be blown away, but I wasn't. If someone wants to learn a good deal about Lincoln in a 200 page biography, this would certainly be an excellent book to get. If you have already read numerous biographies about Lincoln, this does not really add anything new, and this could be skipped without really missing anything. ( )

Reviewed Feb 2007 Nice biography that focuses mainly on Lincoln’s Presidency. Neely almost ignores anything that does not directly relate such as his relationship with his wife and children. Neely explains that with the rise of psychohistory...there is more interest in Lincoln’s early life and intimate home and less on the “crucial half-decade.” This book has tons of pictures and documents, unfortunately in the case of handwritten documents, Neely does not include a typed transcript of what the reader is trying to decipher. The last chapter named “fate” I felt is badly named, Neely makes it ghostly. Neely does a great job explaining why Lincoln did what he did, construption, the Emancipation Proclamation ect... I love Neely’s conclusion, Hugh McCullough who is Secretary of the Treasury writes after Lincoln is assassinated, “my hope is, and my belief is, that this great National calamity will teach the world a lesson, which will be the most beneficial character to our Republican form of Government, that it will show that the assassination of our Chief Magistrate does not affect in the slightest degree the permanence of our institutions or the regular administration of the laws; that an event that would have shaken any other country to the centre does not even stagger for a moment a Government like ours.” 9-2007 ( )

Decent, but not as good as David Herbert Donald's. ( )