Lincoln’s Melancholy

Joshua Wolf Shenk argues that the depression running through Abraham Lincoln's adult life shaped both his character and his leadership. Drawing on seven years of research in the historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars and modern studies of depression, Shenk traces Lincoln's shifting moods, his two or more serious breakdowns, and the illness moving from major episodes when he was young to a chronic form in later life. He looks at the treatments Lincoln endured, a poem he published on suicide and unpublished writings on the worth of suffering. Coping strategies built over a lifetime, among them humor and quiet reflection, and a turn from personal contentment toward universal justice, helped Lincoln lead the nation through its worst crisis.

Ryan Holiday said he loved learning about Lincoln and singled it out in his best book recommendations of 2012.