Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
This book traces the story of our first truly self-made President whose storytelling gifts and debating skills made him a natural politician. He won the nomination in 1860 over three men who were better known and generally thought to be far more qualified. Lincoln made an incredibly brave choice of picking those staunch political rivals to populate his cabinet and the relationship each had to the president and each other is studied here.

It has been said that wartime leadership is a necessary component of a great Presidency. No one had a harder task than to govern during the fractious war between the states. Lincoln was far from perfect, as evidenced by his first several choices of men to lead the Union Army. It wasn’t until he appointed Grant that he found someone with as much determination as himself to finish the job of defeating the Confederate forces. Nevertheless, he stands as our greatest President because he didn’t have a vindictive bone in his body and knew how to bring out the best in people around him. This book should be mandatory reading to anyone aspiring to the Presidency — or maybe just anyone dreaming of a better one.

–Sean Coakley

Shakey by Jimmy McDonough
This is flat-out the best biography of a rock hero I’ve read to date. I could criticize McDonough for going on endlessly with details of Young’s life that seem, at times, exhaustively pedestrian and unnecessary. But as the story of this oddly incandescent man from Winnipeg develops, I realized that the book succeeds in getting behind the inspiration. By learning about Young’s strange and unpredictable zigzags, we understand why he does what he does and how that weirdness fuels his creativity. McDonough did what few biographers of artists have managed to do: he got into his subject’s head and taught us where the songs come from.

–Sean Coakley

Audrey Niffenegger’s debut novel is a story of a man who slips in and out of linear time yet manages against heavy odds to have a spectacularly rich relationship with an artist willing to take the risk. The characters are drawn to perfection and what sounds like sci-fi is anything but. This promising young author’s powers of observation are so acute that I found myself dragging my feet (reading slower!) in order not to miss them for want of finding out what came next. You’ll wonder, at first, about this metaphor of time travel. That she manages to pull it off is testament to a great new talent.

I was very sorry when it ended but totally thrilled by the experience.

–Sean Coakley