Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln by Douglas L. Wilson

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Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary rise from rural obscurity to become the greatest of American presidents has long been the stuff of romance and legend. But Lincoln's trajectory was in fact neither smooth nor inevitable, as historian Douglas L. Wilson demonstrates in this superb re-creation of the crucial years between 1831 and 1842, when the young Lincoln almost miraculously transformed himself from a small-town shopkeeper into “a man to be reckoned with.”

Skillfully interpreting contemporary testimony, Wilson reveals the real person behind the legend. We are made privy to the young Lincoln's frequent bouts of depression and thoughts of suicide; his ambition; his ineptitude with women; his religious skepticism; and, most memorably, his troubled courtship of Mary Todd, the woman who would become his wife. Provocative, enlightening, and moving, Honor's Voice prompts us to reexamine our ideas about one of the central figures—and defining characters—of American history.