The Books
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
Team of Rivals
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Who lost eight elections, failed in business twice, suffered severe depression throughout his adult life, and became the greatest American president — not despite these experiences, but because of what they built in him.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.Abraham Lincoln — as attributed
Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1809. His mother Nancy died when he was nine — the same age at which Napoleon Hill lost his mother, a coincidence that illustrates something about the conditions in which resilient character is formed. His father Thomas remarried a year later, and his stepmother Sarah proved a devoted ally who recognized Lincoln's intellectual gifts and encouraged his reading.
The family moved to Indiana and then Illinois, and Lincoln largely educated himself, reading by firelight everything he could find — the Bible, Aesop, Shakespeare, history, law. He worked at a series of jobs — rail splitter, store clerk, postmaster, surveyor — while teaching himself law and entering politics. His early career was a chronicle of failure: lost his job, failed in business, had a nervous breakdown, lost a bid for the state legislature, lost again, failed in business again, lost a race for Congress, failed in an attempt to get an appointment to the US Land Office, lost a Senate race, lost again for the Senate, lost the vice-presidential nomination.
He was elected president in 1860 at age fifty-one. He governed through the worst crisis in American history, lost friends and colleagues throughout the war, faced constant criticism from both sides, and held the Union together through force of will and clarity of purpose. He was assassinated in 1865, five days after the Confederate surrender. He had held the office for exactly four years.
Lincoln did not leave a systematic philosophy in the way that Aristotle or Epictetus did. What he left was a body of writing — speeches, letters, and documents of extraordinary clarity and moral force — and a life that embodies every principle in this library with unusual completeness.
The quality that most defined Lincoln's leadership was equanimity under pressure — not the absence of feeling, but the refusal to be governed by it. He was attacked from every direction, by enemies and allies alike, throughout his presidency. His responses to criticism were almost invariably patient, generous, and aimed at understanding the critic's position rather than defeating it. When Secretary of War Stanton called him a damn fool in public, Lincoln's response was that if Stanton says he's a damn fool, he must be, because Stanton is usually right. He wore down opposition through the patient accumulation of goodwill rather than the application of force.
His account of failure is the most practically useful thing about him for this library. He did not treat his repeated defeats as verdicts. He treated them as information. Each failure narrowed the possibility space, provided data about what had not worked, and clarified what needed to change. The man who became president at fifty-one had been failing, learning, and adjusting for thirty years. The adjustment was the preparation.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.Abraham Lincoln — as attributed
Two of the greatest speeches in the English language. Read them slowly. The Second Inaugural especially is a complete philosophy in five hundred words.
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