Lincoln (Modern Library)

About this book

Lincoln is the cornerstone of Gore Vidals fictional American chronicle which includes Burr 1876 Washington D.C. Empire and Hollywood. It opens early on a frozen winter morning in 1861 when President-elect Abraham Lincoln slips into Washington flanked by two bodyguards. The future president is in disguise for there is talk of a plot to murder him. During the next four years there will be numerous plots to murder this man who has sworn to unite a disintegrating nation. Isolated in a ramshackle White House in the center of a proslavery city Lincoln presides over a fragmenting government as Lees armies beat at the gates. In this profoundly moving novel a work of epic proportions and intense human sympathy Lincoln is observed by his loved ones and his rivals. The cast of characters is almost Dickensian: politicians generals White House aides newspapermen Northern and Southern conspirators amiably evil bankers and a wife slowly going mad. Vidals portrait of the president is at once intimate and monumental stark and complex drawn with the wit grace and authority of one of the great historical novelists. With a new Introduction by the author.