Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other Lincoln scholars, Joshua Shenk reveals how the sixteenth president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing achievements. Lincoln found the solace and tactics he needed to deal with the nation’s worst crisis in the “coping strategies” that helped him persevere through depressive episodes and personal tragedies.

Shenk relates Lincoln’s symptoms, including mood swings and at least two major breakdowns, and offers compelling evidence of the evolution of his disease, from “major depression” in his twenties and thirties, to “chronic depression” in middle age, to a state transcending our concept of depression. Shenk reveals the treatments Lincoln endured and his efforts to come to terms with his melancholy, including a poem he published on suicide and his unpublished writings on the value of personal—and national—suffering. By shifting his goal away from personal contentment, which he realized he could not attain, and toward universal justice, Lincoln gained the strength and insight that he, and America, required to transcend profound darkness.

Paperback; 368 pages
Publication Date: 10/02/2006
Trim Size: 5.50 x 8.25