These descriptions from Lincoln's speeches and correspondence offer a window into his soul and mind. Lincoln's own words reveal an emotional evolution typically submerged in political biographies. They explain, to a degree not previously understood, the great mystery of his life: the process through which he matured from laborer to store clerk to country lawyer to our greatest president. Of the various internal struggles that plagued him throughout this evolution, perhaps the most compelling is his attempt to reconcile his conscience with the rule of the Constitution.

Zall frames lincoln's words with his own illuminating commentary, providing a continuous, compelling narrative. Beginning with Lincoln's thoughts on his parents, the story moves though his youth and early successes and failures in law and politics, and culminates in his clashes and conflicts -internal as well as external -- as president of a divided country.

Abraham Lincoln was not the kind of person to bare his soul in public or in private. "Even between ourselves, " lamented Mary Todd Lincoln, "his expressions were few." Zall allows the sixteenth president to reveal his innermost thoughts, providing a fascinating glimpse of the man.