Avlon's exquisite storytelling provides a goldmine of actionable wisdom for our troubled times. Highly recommended!' - Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University and author of American Moonshot With erudition and elegance, Avlon documents how Lincoln's sage political wisdom has helped democracy flourish. 'Brilliantly illuminates the enduring legacy of America's greatest president. With its graceful prose and wise insights, this is an important and absorbing contribution to the literature of the American Presidency.” - Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America He sheds new light on the most tangled questions of our history, not least the tragedy of Reconstruction. “Avlon is a master of the art of finding the universal in the particular. ' highly readable, original treatment of Lincoln's tragically interrupted plans to heal the country.' - Foreign Affairs His enduring belief in the power of love and charity to move humanity forward is a legacy that belongs not just to the United States but to the world.” - The Washington Independent Review of Books It is reassuring to have the case for each restated so cogently.' - The Washington Post

As Lincoln understood, the work of democracy at home is indispensable to the work of peace abroad. With insight, he chooses familiar and lesser-known Lincoln phrases to remind readers how much we still have to learn from our 16th president. 'Avlon’s durable faith in Lincoln offers a boost of confidence at a time when our history, instead of uniting us, has become yet another battleground. These are not unfamiliar tales to students of Lincoln, but Avlon makes the retelling affecting and powerful.' - The New York Times Book Review And, Avlon believes, the Lincolnian example could be a similar balm for our political wounds today.To read these chapters is to discover Lincoln’s rare compound of 'empathy, honesty, humor and humility.'. 'In this elegant, almost conversational, exposition of Lincoln the 'soulful centrist,' the 16th president appears as the reconciler in chief, who not only saved democracy from destruction in war but also pointed the way to saving it from inertia and futility in peace. Lincoln’s plan to win the peace is his unfinished symphony, but in its existing notes, we can find an anthem that can begin to bridge our divisions today. But he also understood that peace needs to be waged with as much intensity as war. Even during the Civil War, surrounded by reactionaries and radicals, he refused to back down from his belief that there is more that unites us than divides us. Lincoln and the Fight for Peace reveals how Lincoln’s character informed his commitment to unconditional surrender followed by a magnanimous peace. As US General Lucius Clay, architect of the post-WWII German occupation, said when asked what guided his decisions: “I tried to think of the kind of occupation the South would have had if Abraham Lincoln had lived.” While his assassination sent the country careening off course, Lincoln’s vision would be vindicated long after his death, inspiring future generations in their own quests to secure a just and lasting peace. Lee at Appomattox that April were a direct expression of the president’s belief that a soft peace should follow a hard war. Grant’s famously generous terms of surrender to General Robert E. Balancing moral courage with moderation, Lincoln believed that decency could be the most practical form of politics, but he understood that people were more inclined to listen to reason when greeted from a position of strength. He used humor, logic, and scripture to depolarize bitter debates. He did not demonize people he disagreed with.

The power of Lincoln’s personal example in the closing days of the war offers a portrait of a peacemaker. It is a story of war and peace, race and reconciliation.Īs the tide of the Civil War turned in the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln took a dangerous two-week trip to visit the troops on the front lines accompanied by his young son, seeing combat up close, meeting liberated slaves in the ruins of Richmond, and comforting wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. A groundbreaking, revelatory history of Abraham Lincoln’s plan to secure a just and lasting peace after the Civil War-a vision that inspired future presidents as well as the world’s most famous peacemakers, including Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

John booku