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Looking for Abraham Lincoln books? I’ll show you the 4 best, essential Lincoln books without all the hassle of plodding through the literally tens of thousands of Lincoln biographies out there!
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, he was born in 1809 and was infamously shot in April of 1865. Among the greats of American history, he is also claimed by many to be their favourite US president. Ironically, for some, he is also claimed as the worst. I, for one, think that Abraham Lincoln was a great man. Indeed, not simply for glossy historic reasons, but also because of his wit and eloquent sense of sarcasm.
Any Abraham Lincoln books worth their weight in gold luster should account for all of these facts. So, here are 4 books so essential to understanding Abraham Lincoln that even if you have read any others you will still need to add these to your reading list!
4 Essential Abraham Lincoln Books You Need To Read
1. “Abraham Lincoln” by Carl Sandburg (“The Prairie Years” & “The War Years”
The single most essential book on Abraham Lincoln is Sandburg’s “The Prairie Years” and “The War Years.” This book is so indispensable that after this work was completed (originally published as a single volume in 1954) there can be no equal to Carl Sandburg’s research because much of what he wrote came from first-hand sources! No other author since him can talk to sources that knew Lincoln himself!
Carl Sandburg’s “The Prairie Years” and “The War Years” has come in many versions and republishings. However, that is not the whole story. The book you see above (my hardcover edition) is actually the condensed version of an original six-volume set which was published in 2 runs: “The Prairie Years” [2 volumes] in 1926; and “The War Years” [4 volumes] in 1939.
I picked up an original copy of this 6-volume set at a book sale. It is one of my favourite multi-volume book sets. This was a once in a lifetime find! Sandburg is the man! See what other crazy book deals I’ve found dirt cheap.
Of course, for any Carl Sandburg “Lincoln” nerd, there is the must-have illustrated version. No Lincoln egghead biography bookshelf is complete without this!
2. “Lincoln” by David Herbert Donald
At over 700 pages, David Donald’s biography of Abraham Lincoln is a true historical masterpiece. Although Donald is hailed as a Pulitzer Prize winner, he did not win it for this book, even though it’s misleadingly on the cover.
That does not really matter though, the fact remains that this Abraham Lincoln book was written by a Pulitzer Prize winner – actually, David Donald has won 2. All that is very apparent when you read Donald’s book, his writing style has a very engaging storytelling mode to it which utilizes Lincoln quotes just as they need to be, in perfect harmony with the text.
What makes David Donald’s “Lincoln” a step above other biographies is his use of original source materials. On the jacket sleeve it indicates that Donald spent nearly 50 years researching this book, much of it with material which had not yet been discovered, and therefore not available, to other historians prior to him. This means that Donald’s book is full of original research that you will not get in other Abraham Lincoln books.
This book is as felicitous as it is fun!
3. “A. Lincoln: A Biography” by Ronald C. White
This is another gem of a Lincoln biography. Ronald White really gets into the personality of Abraham Lincoln, his writing delves deep into the mindset, struggles, ambiguities, and even his use of language with respect to understanding who Lincoln the person was.
Any author can gloss over the historical record one sentence at a time, few can offer insights into their personality with such extreme measure and eloquence. Sandburg, Donald, and White have all done so.
“A. Lincoln: A Biography” is very reader-friendly. It was compiled with in-text images and block quotes which make the passing of pages much more enjoyable than an ocean of banal text. This Abraham Lincoln biography is an absolutely essential treatise on the life of America’s 16th president.
4. “Abraham Lincoln: A Life” [2 Volumes] by Micheal Burlingame
Michael Burlingame’s Lincoln biography makes my list not because of his writing ability, but because it is factually a stellar object. “Lincoln: A Life” was published in 2008 and named as one of the best 5 books of 2009 (back cover); interestingly, for comparison, Ronald White won the NY Times, Washington Post, and LA Times bestseller awards in 2009.
Micheal Burlingame is lauded as being one of the preeminent Lincoln biographers of our age. His book surely upholds those statistics. My only drawback with Burlingame’s writing is that it is a consistently dry read, which takes a toll on a reader over the course of 2,000 pages (2-volume set, each volume about 1,000 pages)!
I remember being emphatically excited seeing these two volumes sitting on a bookshelf in Barnes & Noble when they were first released. I couldn’t wait to pick them up and start reading them at home. To my dismay, although I was confronted with tons of Lincoln facts, dates, events, quotes, reading the first book was more like reading an annotated timeline rather than a narrative. This could just be my personal preference, however.
That idiosyncrasy aside, if you want to know anything and everything about the life of Abraham Lincoln, then Michael Burlingame’s volumes are essential. Going far beyond the first-person view of Abraham Lincoln’s life, Burlingame includes battlefield narratives, sculpts larger social issues, and employs the use of multiple perspectives in the telling of this gigantic tale.
SOURCES
- Sandburg, Carl. 1993. “Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years” One-Volume Edition. New York: Galahad Books. [Amazon Link]
- Donald, David Herbert. 1995. “Lincoln.” New York: Simon & Schuster. [Amazon Link]
- White, Ronald C. Jr. 2009. “A. Lincoln: A Biography.” New York: Random House. [Amazon Link]
- Burlingame, Michael. 2008. “Abraham Lincoln: A Life” Two-Volume set. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Amazon Link]
- Sandburg, Carl and Edward Goodman (ed.). 2011. “Abraham Lincoln: The Illustrated Edition. The Prairie Years and The War Years.” New York: Fall River. [Amazon Link]
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