I don’t recall ever being as profoundly touched by a book as the one I finished tonight.

I had made reading “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” my summer literary project. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history last year, was a Christmas present, but it took me months to turn the first page.

As the months went by, I couldn’t bring myself to launch into 750 pages of fine print on a subject I suspected would be interesting but dry.

Boy, was I wrong.

When I finally opened the cover, I was drawn by author Doris Kearns Goodwin into a book that, while an accurate account of history, also was genuinely readable.

Goodwin set out to tell the story of how Abraham Lincoln’s incredible strength of character allowed him to gather together in his cabinet all of his enemies - because he recognized that the strongest, ablest leaders, working together, were needed to save the nation from the Civil War.

When I put the book down tonight, it wasn’t Goodwin’s brilliant writing, however, that had touched my soul.

It was the brilliance of Mr. Lincoln, who comes through the pages with a clarity that is astounding. I feel like I’m a better person simply because I spent a few dozen hours in the company of Old Abe - even if it was through words on paper.

Time and again, as I turned the pages, I paused to ponder the immense gap between the powerful moral fiber displayed by Abraham Lincoln in holding a nation together through sheer force of character and the apparent lack of morality in government today.

He was called Honest Abe for a reason. How many of today’s politicians have nicknames like that.

It’s also impossible to ignore the contrast between the book’s central theme - Lincoln inviting his opponents into his government, so all sides would be heard - and the current president’s attempts to gather around himself only people who agree with him, and silence anyone who disagrees.

I know this sounds like silliness - a grown man in the early years of the 21st century caught up in nostalgia about a president from the middle of the 19th century.

But I can’t help it. Ms. Goodwin has done a good thing - and touched me in the process.

If you’re up for a reading project, I strongly recommend Team of Rivals.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.