Team of Rivals was FASCINATING!!

True story: I hired Doris Kearns Goodwin to write an essay jointly with her constitutional scholar husband about the 5th amendment. She did a fabulous job.

She was under contract at the time to write Team of Rivals so the CEO of Simon and Schuster called me and threatened to sue. He demanded I come to his office, where he sat on a chair that was pretty high up and put me on a couch pretty far down and read me the riot act. He said Doris was way late with her book.

Of course, Doris never told us about the book, but when we told her our experience with Simon & Schuster, she said "Oh, I just needed a break from the book." She had been working on it for 8 years, if memory serves, and her previous book — of FDR — had won a Pulitzer Prize. I hope I'm remembering this right.

She said she had done tons of research for the book but still couldn't think of the angle that would make it different from other Lincoln biographies. She finally did and it was worth the wait.

It was because you mentioned that book in your previous post that I had mentioned Team of Rivals.

I'll also tell you that it was because of Lazarus Long that I mentioned Past Through Tomorrow. That is where I was introduced to Lazarus Long. The first Lazarus Long story was published in 1939, I think.

The Past Through Tomorrow compilation was published in 1967 and I first read it soon after it was published. Not sure exactly when, but I think that it was prior to 1970.

Hey, I think our reading interests are quite similar! I've read several of the books you've read and had similar reactions. I think I'll check out some of the other ones you recommend :)

If I may, I'd like to make a couple sci-fi recommendations too!

Definitely check out Childhood's End (also by Arthur C. Clarke). A very different take on the 'aliens assisting the next step of human evolution' theme from 2001.

Also, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Cracking story and lots of clever references to golden age sci-fi that I personally like :)

Thanks for the recommendations! I'll check them out.