Lincoln's Mentors

An “original, insightful” examination of how Abraham Lincoln learned to lead—and made an extraordinary political comeback ( The Wall Street Journal ). In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican