Lincoln's Melancholy
How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
By Joshua Wolf Shenk
(Mariner Books, Paperback, 9780618773442, 368pp.)
Publication Date: October 2006
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover, Compact Disc
Categories: Historical - U.S., Presidents & Heads of State, United States - Civil War
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A thoughtful, nuanced portrait of Abraham Lincoln that finds his legendary political strengths rooted in his most personal struggles.
Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the president's character and his leadership. Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health from the time he was a young man. Shenk draws from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of his unhappiness. In the process, he discovers that the President's coping strategies—among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection—ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil.
JOSHUA WOLF SHENK is an essayist and independent scholar whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and in the national bestseller Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, Mother Jones, and other publications. He has been a correspondent for the New Republic, the Economist, and U.S. News & World Report. A contributing editor to the Washington Monthly and a faculty member at New School University, Shenk serves on the advisory council of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and consulted on the History Channel's film Lincoln. He lives in Brooklyn.
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