JUVENILE · BIOGRAPHY
Ruth Ashby
Ruth Ashby is the author of more than thirty books for children and young adults, including Anne Frank: Young Diarist and Rosa Parks: Courageous Citizen. A former book editor, she teaches English at the Portledge School in Locust Valley, New York. Source: Ruth Ashby is a children's writer who focuses on nonfiction topics ranging from biology and paleontology to history and biography. She has also edited such volumes as Herstory: Women Who Changed the World and The Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart, Woman Homesteader. Herstory features short biographies of 120 of history's prominent women rulers, scientists, and athletes. Source
Abraham Lincoln wasn't the sort of man who could lose himself in a crowd.
— from Lincoln, 1905
Most acclaimed
Gettysburg
2003
"On July 2, 1863, the second day of fighting at Gettysburg, Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, in an ill-conceived interpretation of his orders, advanced his men beyond the established Union line and exposed his flanks to a potentially devastating Confederate attack. Shortly after being reprimanded by his commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, for endangering the entire Union Army. Sickles was hit by a cannonball. He returned to Washington with his leg amputated and his pride badly wounded." "A politician and lawyer prior to the war, Sickles was already notorious for being the first person in U.S. history acquitted of murder by pleading temporary insanity. During his recuperation in the nation's capital, Sickles defended his actions at Gettysburg to anyone who would listen, including President Lincoln, and criticized Meade before Congress's Committee on the Conduct of the War. He continued defending himself for years after the war, while Meade remained mostly silent on the subject." "Now, historian Richard A. Sauers destroys many commonly accepted myths about the controversy by examining the evidence in detail. In this fascinating analysis, he highlights the personality conflicts among military leaders that complicate combat. He also demonstrates that distortions, such as Sickles's version of Gettysburg, are frequently accepted as fact by historians and repeated for generations to come. Sauers shows that Sickles's unjust manipulations harmed Meade's reputation for years after the war."--Jacket.
Lincoln
1905
The phenomenal national bestseller that is "the Lincoln biography for this generation" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.)-now in paperback. Drawing on resources not available until recently, including Lincoln's personal papers, archives, and newspaper reports, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald presents a masterful account of Lincoln's rise to the presidency and the political and personal challenges he faced while in office. David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a stunningly original portrait of Lincoln's life and presidency. Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln's gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln's character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so unprepared for the presidency to become a great moral leader. In the most troubled of times, here was a man who led the country out of slavery and preserved a shattered Union-in short, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen.