Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Response

Response

Team of Rivals was generally well received by critics. Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War historian James M. McPherson called it "an elegant, incisive study of Lincoln and leading members of his cabinet that will appeal to experts as well as to those whose knowledge of Lincoln is an amalgam of high school history and popular mythology" and stated that Goodwin addressed Lincoln's gift for coalition-building "better than any other writer". Allen C. Guelzo wrote in The Washington Post that "this immense, finely boned book is no dull administrative or bureaucratic history; rather, it is a story of personalities – a messianic drama, if you will – in which Lincoln must increase and the others must decrease." In the Seattle Times, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett praised the book's "ambitious, multi-strand structure", concluding, "This monumental effort is a gift; Goodwin's work clarifies and preserves Lincoln's legacy with rare skill." Randy Dotinga of the Christian Science Monitor called Team of Rivals an "immense and immensely readable work". Sanford D. Horwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Goodwin is "an engaging, insightful chronicler of Lincoln's Civil War presidency, although she strays from time to time from her stated intention of keeping the lens focused on Lincoln and his 1860 rivals, who, in turn, were often feuding with others in Lincoln's Cabinet."

In 2006, the book was awarded the Lincoln Prize, "awarded annually for the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or a subject relating to their era". On March 29, 2006, Goodwin was announced as the winner of the $50,000 Book Prize for American History of the New-York Historical Society. Team of Rivals was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

U.S. President Barack Obama – coincidentally, also a lanky Illinois lawyer who defeated a better-known New York senator for a presidential nomination – named Team of Rivals as the one book he would want on a desert island. As a senator, he met with Goodwin in Washington to discuss the book. After his election in 2008, Obama reached out to previous rivals including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who became his Secretary of State, drawing comparisons to Lincoln's "Team of Rivals" approach.