The Lincolns

Reviews

“With a novelist’s feel for detail and drama, Daniel Mark Epstein portrays the Lincoln marriage with sensitivity and insight, painting an intimate portrait of a complex and consequential marriage. This work is a splendid addition to the Lincoln literature.” 

“Will we ever tire of trying to understand this man? I doubt it, and in this impressive work, Daniel Mark Epstein approaches Lincoln through his complicated and revealing union with Mary Todd.”

“The Lincolns’ marriage has always been shrouded in mystery and sadness.  But in this fascinating biography by the peerless Epstein, the ties that bound them together are rendered with tender clarity. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, The Lincolns is destined to join the pantheon of indispensable books on the Civil War.” 

“[Epstein] is a poet by trade who moonlights in biography, having published lives of Nat King Cole and Aimee Semple McPherson. His account of the Lincolns’ marriage combines a poet’s sensitivity and imagination with a good historian’s rigor and fairness. He has in particular an eye for the shifting tides of status and the tensions they can create: He knows that the wooing of the well-born Mary by the rustic young lawyer Lincoln, no matter how impressive his prospects, entailed a decline in status for her and an advance for him—and a difficult burden for a young marriage to carry. Mr. Epstein’s gift for atmospheric detail cuts deep, too…Readers will be grateful for his modesty and for much else. He has written what may be the best Lincoln book in a generation.”

“When one puts aside the stereotypes associated with the Lincolns, a rich and complex married life emerges…There is a lot that is new. First, this is the only book about the marriage that recounts the Springfield years (sixteen years out of twenty-two) in as much detail as the White House years…[and] there’s a lot more that is new.”

“Daniel Mark Epstein’s brilliantly conceived The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage is marked by meticulous scholarship and a balanced evaluation of the union that, until now, has confounded biographers and readers alike. The author, also a poet, has given us an insightful and lyrical narrative of the relationship between Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln that helped make him president.”

“Daniel Epstein in 2004 gave us the best book yet written on Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. Now he has given us the best book yet written on the marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln—a comprehensive, sensitive, elegantly wrought masterpiece that puts us up close and personal with one of the most interesting pairings in American history.”

“[In] this reliable but familiar account of the Lincolns' frequently tempestuous marriage…what Epstein brings is a novelistic, almost lyrical touch.”

“In this new Lincoln chronicle, Epstein concentrates exclusively on the relationship between this seemingly odd and mismatched power couple…This relationship biography reads like a nineteenth-century version of a Greek tragedy.”

“A dynamic picture of a marriage every bit as fractious and as buffeted as the nation the Lincolns served.”

“In coolly objective tones, Adam Grupper narrates Epstein’s detailed account of the couple’s early years…Grupper’s nasal timbre is well suited to this work…[and] overall, his informative reading fits the text well.”

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