In writing Lincoln, David Donald set out to do two things: one, provide a thorough explanation of Lincoln's decision-making process, and two, highlight the “essential passivity of his nature” (14) . Unfortunately, he succeeded in only one of these. He managed to achieve the first one. The inspiration for the explainer-style narrative came from something President John F. Kennedy once confided to Donald. President Kennedy, troubled by the practice of ranking presidents and how his own administration would be viewed in the future, complained to Donald that "no one has any right to rank a president... who has not sat in his chair, not examined the mail and information that came across his desk and learned why he made his decisions" (Donald Duck 13). In keeping with this idea, Donald Duck provides the texts the reader needs to judge for themselves Lincoln's merits while maintaining his work is as neutral as possible. He uses primary sources almost exclusively and limits the material in the book to only what Lincoln would have known (Donald Duck 13-14), thus ensuring that the reader's mind is not clouded by either historical prejudice or fact. outsiders when examining Lincoln's decision making. More importantly, he himself does not judge Lincoln. Nowhere in the book will you find a passage that discusses whether Lincoln's decisions were right or wrong. Donald keeps his historical analysis focused on how various events and ideas influenced America's sixteenth president, not on the validity of his decisions. Donald also argues that Lincoln illustrates the president's passivity. By passivity, Donald means that Lincoln preferred to react to situations rather than start with a plan. He claims that this liability, along with…half of the paper…is to move African-Americans to a part of the world where they could set up their own government. Lincoln copied this notion again and retained it until he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Fredrickson's article provided background information on Lincoln's racial ideas that were underdeveloped in Donald's book. Overall, Lincoln is a comprehensive study of the life of Abraham Lincoln and is a true goldmine. Donald's omission of summary paragraphs and lack of conclusions make it difficult to understand the bigger picture if the reader is not familiar with the story of Abraham Lincoln, so this book is best suited to researchers and history buffs. Although Donald's thesis was poorly supported, the value of his book lay not in the argument, but in the enormous amount of information contained within the pages, making the thesis the minor focus of the work..