A brilliant and novel examination of how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership
“Abraham Lincoln had less schooling than all but a couple of other presidents, and more wisdom than every one of them. In this original, insightful book, Michael Gerhardt explains how this came to be." –H.W. Brands, Wall Street Journal
In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?
As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln’s reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately—Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership, mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and—what would become his most enduring legacy—developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.
Without these mentors, Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer—and without Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.
"1137112470"
Lincoln's Mentors: The Education of a Leader
A brilliant and novel examination of how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership
“Abraham Lincoln had less schooling than all but a couple of other presidents, and more wisdom than every one of them. In this original, insightful book, Michael Gerhardt explains how this came to be." –H.W. Brands, Wall Street Journal
In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?
As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln’s reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately—Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership, mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and—what would become his most enduring legacy—developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.
Without these mentors, Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer—and without Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.
Abraham Lincoln is our national lodestone, toward whom we as individuals collectively turn again and again for inspiration and insight, especially when facing a challenge, crisis, and possibly failure. Lincoln is America’s mentor and never fails to fascinate. But who were his mentors? To more fully understand Lincoln’s leadership, Michael Gerhardt turns his perspective to those this complicated president chose as teachers. Lincoln’s Mentors is a uniquely revealing story of Lincoln’s political education, his trajectory from the obscurity of “Spotty Lincoln" to “Great Emancipator.”
A brilliant and novel examination of how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership
“Abraham Lincoln had less schooling than all but a couple of other presidents, and more wisdom than every one of them. In this original, insightful book, Michael Gerhardt explains how this came to be." –H.W. Brands, Wall Street Journal
In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?
As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln’s reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately—Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership, mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and—what would become his most enduring legacy—developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.
Without these mentors, Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer—and without Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.
James Lurie, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, has worked for the biggest companies in the news, entertainment, and advertising businesses. He has an eclectic background; he has been a musician, a writer, and a doctoral candidate in Chinese history. He has been an audiobook narrator and even been the voice of a talking gasoline pump. As an actor he has had recurring roles on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Law & Order, Picket Fences, and As the World Turns, to name but a few, and he won a Dramalogue Award in Los Angeles for his stage work.
Michael J. Gerhardt is the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law and the Director of the UNC Center on Law and Government at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has degrees from Yale University (BA), London School of Economics (M.Sc.) and the University of Chicago (JD). He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife Deborah and their three sons Ben, Daniel, and Noah > is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina. His teaching and research focusses on constitutional conflicts between presidents and Congress. In 2015, he became the first legal scholar to be asked by the Library of Congress to serve as its principal adviser in revising the official annotation of the United States Constitution. He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post and a number of other publications, and has been interviewed by every major TV network and NPR.
