BIOGRAPHY · PRESIDENTS
William Eleazar Barton
Also known as: William E. Barton, William Barton
Nancy Lincoln (née Hanks; February 5, 1784 – October 5, 1818) was the mother of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Her marriage to Thomas Lincoln also produced daughter Sarah and son Thomas Jr. In 1816, when Nancy and Thomas had been married for just over 10 years, the family moved from Kentucky to western Perry County, Indiana; when Spencer County was formed in 1818, the Lincoln homestead lay within its current boundaries. Nancy Lincoln died from milk sickness or consumption in 1818 at the Little Pigeon Creek Community in Spencer County when Abraham was nine years old.
In 1858, against a backdrop of heightening sectional tensions over slavery, Abraham Lincoln stood in the Great Hall of the Illinois House of Representatives, warning his countrymen that a house divided against itself could not stand.
— from Abraham Lincoln
Most acclaimed
The life of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln "was a tall, spare man, with large bones, and towering up to six feet and four inches. He leaned forward, and stooped as he walked...There was no grace in his movements, but an expression of awkwardness, combined with force and vigor. By nature he was diffident, and when in crowds, not speaking and conscious of being observed, he seemed to shrink with bashfulness...His forehead was broad and high, his hair was rather stiff and coarse, and nearly black, his eye-brows heavy, his eyes dark grey, clear, very expressive, and varying with every mood, now sparkling with humor and fun, then flashing with wit; stern with indignation at wrong and injustice, then kind and genial, and then again dreamy and melancholy.". Isaac N. Arnold's word picture owes everything to personal observation because he knew Abraham Lincoln well for a quarter of a century. Eventually an adviser to the sixteenth president, Arnold attended his inaugurations, heard his great speeches, visited him at the White House, and on a spring day in 1865 joined the procession that carried his slain body there. Twenty years later he published this biography, giving a detailed sense of Lincoln the entertaining storyteller, the shrewd politician, the steadfast visionary. Here is the story of Lincoln's rise from humble origins to the presidency, backgrounded by events leading inexorably to the Civil War. Boyhood in Kentucky and Illinois, legal and legislative experiences, marriage to Mary Todd, name-making debates with Stephen Douglas, struggles as president to end slavery and shore up the union, conduct of Northern forces as commander-in-chief, murder at Ford's Theater - all fuel the narrative drive of The Life of Abraham Lincoln.
George Washington
1901
George Washington is by far the most important figure in the history of the United States. Against all military odds, he liberated the thirteen colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire and presided over the process to produce and ratify a Constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than two hundred years. In two terms as president, he set that Constitution to work with such success that, by the time he finally retired, America was well on its way to becoming the richest and most powerful nation on earth.Despite his importance, Washington remains today a distant figure to many Americans. Previous books about him are immensely long, multivolume, and complicated. Paul Johnson has now produced a brief life that presents a vivid portrait of the great man as young warrior, masterly commander-in-chief, patient Constitution maker, and exceptionally wise president. He also shows Washington as a farmer of unusual skill and an entrepreneur of foresight, patriarch of an extended family, and proprietor of one of the most beautiful homes in America, which he largely built and adorned.Trenchant and original as ever, Johnson has given us a brilliant, sharply etched portrait of this iconic figure -- both as a hero and as a man.
Abraham Lincoln
Indiana , 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness.""My baby boy..." she whispers before dying. Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire. When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln , he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House. While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years. Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.