A review by spinnerroweok
Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk

4.0

Shenk packs a lot into this biography of President Lincoln's melancholy. In this book, we get a sketch of a biography of Lincoln, a lot of information on melancholy and/or depression, and a bit of analysis of the history of Lincoln biographies. My favorite quote in the book is, "history is not what happened in the past, but the best story we can tell from the available material."

I think I liked the insight into trends into what history is and how it is told better than the story of Lincoln's depression, although that was interesting, too. I don't recommend this for a first read on Lincoln, but a good third or fourth book to read on him.