Joshua Zeitz has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University, Harvard University, and Princeton University. He is the author of several books on American political and social history and has written for "The New York Times, The Washington Post, " the "New Republic, The Atlantic, Dissent, " and "American Heritage." He lives with his wife and two daughters in Hoboken, New Jersey.
"What a wonderful, welcome book. Zeitz has pulled off a difficult
task -- revealing how the myth of Lincoln came to be without
distorting the true greatness of our extraordinary 16th
President."
-- Ken Burns (filmmaker) "Joshua Zeitz's delightful study of John
Hay and John Nicolay interweaves intimate biography, political
drama, and the shaping of historical memory to produce an arresting
and original narrative. Above all, it reminds us that, thanks to
Lincoln's secretaries, the moral dimensions of the emancipationist
Civil War could not be bleached from the historical record by an
increasingly fashionable understanding of the struggle as a
romantic 'brothers' conflict'."
--Richard Carwardine, author of "Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and
Power"
"Abraham Lincoln was blessed with truly first-rate biographers in
John Nicolay and John Hay, so it is 'altogether fitting and proper'
that Nicolay and Hay have now attracted a terrific chronicler of
their own life and times in Joshua Zeitz. This fine book traces the
extraordinary evolution of Lincoln's two private secretaries from
clerks into tireless historians and rabid keepers of the flame.
Historians have long remembered their roles as canny observers of
the White House during the Civil War, but this study adds much
fascinating new material about their peerless role in crafting and
preserving the Lincoln image."
--Harold Holzer, author of "The Civil War in 50 Objects"
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