Lincoln’s paradoxes
Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, by Allen C. Guelzo
Few books deserve to be labeled brilliant; this one does. Allen Guelzo not only manages to find something new and substantial to say about Abraham Lincoln, the most-studied figure in American history, but captures the intellectual world of mid-19th-century America. The result is a deeply studied yet altogether accessible narrative that ranges confidently across politics, history and theology, interweaving the three and boring down to their bedrock questions.