Lincoln: A Novel (Vintage International)

Lincoln is a novel set during the American Civil War, opening in early 1861 when President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives in Washington in disguise due to assassination threats. Over the next four years, Lincoln faces multiple plots against his life while working to preserve a fragmenting nation from the White House, which sits isolated in a proslavery city as Confederate armies advance. The novel presents Lincoln through the perspectives of those close to him and his political rivals. The cast includes politicians, generals, White House staff, journalists, conspirators from both North and South, bankers, and Lincoln's wife. Vidal portrays the president as both intimate and monumental, complex and stark. Lincoln forms part of Vidal's fictional American chronicle, which also includes Burr, 1876, Washington, D.C., Empire, and Hollywood.