There have been hundred of biographies, analyses, and critiques of President Abraham Lincoln, but Doris Goodwin’s Team of Rivals : The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln manages to shed refreshing and insightful new light on an old discourse. Goodwin argues that this poor, self-taught, one-term congressman and prairie lawyer was one of the shrewdest political operators and Washington insiders of the time, managing to not only co-opt three better-born, better-experienced men (William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates) for the 1860 Republican nomination, but also bringing these rival men into his Cabinet and obtain their loyalty, respect, and wisdom at a time when the nation was tearing itself apart.