Lincoln's Mentors: The Education of a Leader

By Michael J. Gerhardt

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History

Lincoln's Mentors (2021) is legal scholar Michael J. Gerhardt's study of the five men who most shaped Abraham Lincoln before he became president: Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart and Orville Browning. Drawing on letters, speeches and the record of Lincoln's early career in Illinois and Congress, Gerhardt shows how Lincoln studied these men, borrowed from their methods and learned from their mistakes as he developed his own approach to leadership.

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• Ryan Holiday: “So I went deeper. I read Hay and Nicolay. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 944-page Team of Rivals. Michael Gerhardt’s 496-page book on Lincoln’s mentors.”