Note from Doris Kearns Goodwin

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mary M.

The HISTORY Channel’s three-night documentary event “Abraham Lincoln” will be a definitive biography of the 16th president, the man who led the country during its bloodiest war and greatest crisis. Executive produced by world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize®-winning bestselling author Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Abraham Lincoln” is based upon Kearns Goodwin’s New York Times bestseller, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times.”
Dear Friends,
 
As we begin this Presidents’ Day Weekend, it’s with pride and excitement that I share with you news of “Abraham Lincoln,” a new documentary event series that I have executive produced with RadicalMedia for the HISTORY Channel. This 7.5-hour documentary miniseries premieres this Sunday, February 20, Monday, February 21 and Tuesday, February 22 at 8/7PM.
 
Based on my latest book, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” the miniseries weaves documentary interviews from a rich community of my Lincoln colleagues together with premium dramatic live-action scenes so that viewers can understand and come to absorb through Lincoln’s actions and words the essence of who he was and what he accomplished. Lincoln’s humility, empathy, resilience, ambition, political acumen, and humor are on full display as we begin with his impoverished childhood, his days as a young prairie lawyer and budding politician, through his unlikely election to the presidency, his alliance with Frederick Douglass, and his assassination only five days after the end of the Civil War. We seek to provide a contemporary understanding of the complexities of young Abraham Lincoln who grows to become President Lincoln, the man who saved the Union, won the war and secured emancipation. 
 
I hope that you will be inspired and entertained when you see the dazzling performances of Emmy Award-nominated actor Graham Sibley as Lincoln, Stefan Adegbola as Frederick Douglass and Jenny Stead as Mary Todd Lincoln, and hear from our prodigious collection of Lincoln scholars, authors and others, including President Barack Obama, Gen. Stan McChrystal, Christy Coleman, Allen Guelzo, Edna Greene Medford, Harold Holzer, Caroline Janney, Catherine Clinton, Ted Widmer, Mary Frances Berry, Richard Blackett, Clint Smith, Carey Latimore, Manisha Sinha, and more.
 
It is my decades spent with our 16th President that allow me to remain optimistic about our country’s future—because in our time of deepest crisis aroused citizens joined together and with the nation’s leaders to move us closer to our founding ideals. There are heartening signs and certainly much more work to do.
 



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