description: Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.To most Americans, Abraham Lincoln is a monolithic figure, the Great Emancipator and Savior of the Union, beloved by all. In Gore Vidal's Lincoln we meet Lincoln the man and Lincoln the political animal, the president who entered a besieged capital where most of the population supported the South and where even those favoring the Union had serious doubts that the man from Illinois could save it. Far from steadfast in his abhorrence of slavery, Lincoln agonizes over the best course of action and comes to his great decision only when all else seems to fail. As the Civil War ravages his nation, Lincoln must face deep personal turmoil, the loss of his dearest son, and the harangues of a wife seen as a traitor for her Southern connections. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully executed, Gore Vidal's Lincoln allows the man to breathe again.
language: English
title: Lincoln
titlecomplete: Lincoln
characters: George Meade, John Surratt, Jr., Irvin McDowell, William Wallace Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln, Egbert Ludovicus Viele, John Watt, John Pope, William H. Seward, Elihu B. Washburne, Joseph Hooker, Adele Cutts Douglas, Mary Todd Lincoln, Daniel Sickles, John C. Breckinridge, Ambrose Burnside, Walt Whitman, John Hay, Henry D. Cooke, James Buchanan, John R. Goldsborough, Simon Cameron, Frederick W. Seward, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William Sprague IV, Thaddeus Stevens, George McClellan, Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Emilie Todd Helm, Henry Halleck, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry Wikoff, Montgomery Blair, Edwin Stanton, Ward Hill Lamon, Mary Surratt, Benjamin Wade, Charles Sumner, Elizabeth Keckley, Salmon P. Chase, Richard Lyons, Francis Preston Blair Jr., William Howard Russell, David Herold, John E. Wool, Francis Preston Blair, John Wilkes Booth, Allan Pinkerton, Gideon Welles, Edmund Spangler, William Herndon, Tad Lincoln, William P. Fessenden, Kate Chase, Winfield Scott, John George Nicolay
genres: Fiction, Presidents, Politics, American History, Historical, American, Historical Fiction, Literature, Civil War, Novels
ratings_count: 9229
places: Washington, D.C.
series: Narratives of Empire
awards: awardedAt: 473414400000
name: Benjamin Barondess Award
publisher: Buccaneer Books