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Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
Joshua Wolf Shenk
Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other esteemed Lincoln scholars, Shenk reveals how the sixteenth president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing success.
Houghton Mifflin
September 2005
Featuring: Abraham Lincoln
368 pages ISBN: 0618551166 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Lincoln found the solace and tactics he needed to deal with
the nation"s worst crisis in the "coping strategies" he had
developed over a lifetime of persevering through depressive
episodes and personal tragedies. With empathy and authority gained from his own experience
with depression, Shenk crafts a nuanced, revelatory account
of Lincoln and his legacy. Based on careful, intrepid
research, Lincoln"s Melancholy unveils a wholly new
perspective on how our greatest president brought America
through its greatest turmoil. Shenk relates Lincoln"s symptoms, including mood swings and
at least two major breakdowns, and offers compelling
evidence of the evolution of his disease, from "major
depression" in his twenties and thirties to "chronic
depression" later on. Shenk reveals the treatments Lincoln
endured and his efforts to come to terms with his
melancholy, including a poem he published on suicide and
his unpublished writings on the value of personal--and
national--suffering. By consciously shifting his goal away
from personal contentment (which he realized he could not
attain) and toward universal justice, Lincoln gained the
strength and insight that he, and America, required to
transcend profound darkness.
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