Lincoln's Mentors

A brilliant and novel examination of how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership, revealing how five men mentored an obscure lawyer with no executive experience to become America's greatest president"Gerhardt has devised an ingenious solution for demystifying America's most enigmatic president: examining the key people who influenced Lincoln as he developed his own unique skills and leadership style." –Russell L. Riley, UVA's Miller CenterIn 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the...