Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

"A perfect starting place for those [with an] interest in two of American history's most important figures." — Washinton Post

Abraham Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than one year of formal schooling, and became the nation's greatest president. Frederick Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling, and became one of America's greatest writers, activists, and spellbinding orators. At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln invited Douglass into the White House. Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of ending slavery.

Now in this masterful dual biography, award-winning Harvard University scholar John Stauffer illuminates the lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln during a period of profound cultural turbulence. As Stauffer describes the person and political struggles of two of the country's greatest leaders, he reveals how these adversaries ultimately became friends . . .and forever changed the history of the United States.

"An original, eloquent, unsentimental examination of both men and their legacies." — Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A poignant story. . . . Stands apart from other biographies by focusing on how each man continually remade himself. . . . Giants is a pathbreaking work that dissolves traditional conceptions of these two seminal figures." —Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University, author of America Behind the Color Line