Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin

The sheer size of Goodwin's book is intimidating, but once you start it gives exactly the opposite impression - that the author is flying through the stories of Lincoln and his cabinet at breakneck speed.  The Civil War is simply a minor back story through much of the book, believe it or not.
This is a interesting tale, well-told, and I found myself fascinated by the people in it - especially Lincoln, whose endurance both before and during his presidency is nothing short of superhuman.  But this book taught me a new aspect of his greatness, and that was not merely the capacity to learn, endure, and achieve, but to hold things together.  It was a remarkable achievement simply for Lincoln to hold his party together between the election and his inauguration, and the "team of rivals" in his cabinet was simply the most public manifestation of that.  The book also made clear how much of Lincoln's greatness was simply his ability to look beyond the immediate issues and disappointments to the longer term goal.  For example, far from harming his political future, his losses in the Senate races in the 1850's were crucial to his ability to win his party's nomination for the presidency a few years later, as he built reservoirs of good will and reputation that served him well in the later race.
On the whole, one of the best pieces of history I have read in a while.  My only caveat is Goodwin's frequent use of glowing quotes from Lincoln's contemporaries about him or in some cases his late son Willie without making clear whether the comment was before the subject's death.  Given the tendency of post-mortem opinions to be somewhat biased in favor of the recently deceased, I would have liked to know which were made before Lincoln's assassination.
One other thing.  Goodwin probably never intended this, but Salmon P. Chase really comes across as a sort of Victorian Wile E. Coyote to Lincoln's Roadrunner.  Watching his presidential ambitions be repeatedly (and meritoriously) crushed was a high point of the book for me.