"Abraham Lincoln was a fatalist who promoted freedom; he was a classical liberal who couched liberalism's greatest deed - emancipation of the slaves - in the unliberal language of divine providence; he was a religious doubter who became a national icon bordering on religion; and he was a rights-oriented liberal who appealed to natural law when confronting slavery"--Provided by publisher.

The story of Abraham Lincoln as it has never been told before: through the strange, even otherworldly, points of contact between his family and that of the man who killed him, John Wilkes Booth. In the 1820s, two families, unknown to each other, worked on farms in the American wilderness. It seemed unlikely that the families would ever meet-and yet, they did. The son of one family, the famed actor John Wilkes Booth, killed the son of the other, President...