Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Library of Religious Biography (LRB)) - Softcover

Guelzo's book breaks new ground in exploring the role of ideas in Lincoln's life, treating him for the first time as a serious thinker deeply involved in the struggles of 19th-century thought. Lincoln emerges from Guelzo's portrait as a creative yet profoundly paradoxical man-possessing deep moral and religious character yet not adhering to any organized form of religion, a classic nineteenth century liberal who yet came to realize that the liberal state could not survive without an appeal to natural law and natural theology.

Guelzo is dean of the Templeton Honors College and Grace F. Kea Professor of American History at Eastern College in Pennsylvania, and a former fellow of the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University.

Presented by the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute of Gettysburg College, the Lincoln Prize is the most generous award in the field of American history. Each of the winning books will earn a $20,000 prize and a bronze bust of Lincoln. The awards, announced on Lincoln's birthday, will be presented at an April 18, 2000 banquet in New York City.

The first "intellectual biography" of Lincoln, this work explores the role of ideas in Lincoln's life, treating him as a serious thinker deeply involved in the nineteenth-century debates over politics, religion, and culture. Written with passion and dramatic impact, Guelzo's masterful study offers a revealing new perspective on a man whose life was in many ways a paradox. As journalist Richard N. Ostling notes, "Much has been written about Lincoln's belief and disbelief, " but Guelzo's extraordinary account "goes deeper."