num_pages: 672
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: Francis Preston Blair, John C. Breckinridge, Daniel Sickles, Emilie Todd Helm, William H. Seward, Allan Pinkerton, William Herndon, Salmon P. Chase, George McClellan, Gideon Welles, Frederick W. Seward, John Wilkes Booth, James Buchanan, Montgomery Blair, Francis Preston Blair Jr., John Surratt, Jr., Elizabeth Keckley, William Wallace Lincoln, John E. Wool, Egbert Ludovicus Viele, Edmund Spangler, Ulysses S. Grant, Edwin Stanton, Richard Lyons, William Howard Russell, Mary Todd Lincoln, Adele Cutts Douglas, Irvin McDowell, Benjamin Wade, Henry D. Cooke, John Pope, James A. Garfield, Charles Sumner, Robert Todd Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Henry Halleck, Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Henry Wikoff, John Watt, Ambrose Burnside, Kate Chase, John George Nicolay, John R. Goldsborough, Tad Lincoln, Ward Hill Lamon, John Hay, William P. Fessenden, Abraham Lincoln, David Herold, Elihu B. Washburne, Walt Whitman, George Meade, Simon Cameron, Joseph Hooker, Winfield Scott, Mary Surratt, William Sprague IV
genres: Civil War, American, Politics, Historical, Historical Fiction, Novels, Literature, American History, Fiction, Presidents
ratings_count: 9229
places: Washington, D.C.
series: Narratives of Empire
awards: awardedAt: 473414400000
name: Benjamin Barondess Award
publisher: Vintage