In the winter of 1860–61, the crisis that erupted with the election of Abraham Lincoln threatened to split the nation. In his newest Lincoln book, Lincoln: President-Elect, Harold Holzer examines the perilous interregnum before the president-elect's inauguration and recounts Lincoln's public and private struggle to preserve the Union. Mr. Holzer is co-chairman of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

(Introduction by Paul A. Levengood)