Todd Brewster has served as Don E. Ackerman Director of Oral History at the United States Military Academy, West Point, and is a longtime journalist who has worked as an editor for Time and Life and as senior producer for ABC News. He has written for Vanity Fair, Time, Life, The Huffington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and is the coauthor with the late Peter Jennings of the bestselling books THE CENTURY, THE CENTURY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE and IN SEARCH OF AMERICA. He lives with his wife and two sons in Ridgefield, Connecticut. LINCOLN'S GAMBLE is his first book.

Books by Todd Brewster

Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War

by Todd Brewster - History, Nonfiction, Politics

On July 12, 1862, Abraham Lincoln spoke for the first time of his intention to free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was a tumultuous six months, an episode during which the 16th president fought bitterly with his generals, disappointed his cabinet, and sank into painful bouts of clinical depression. Todd Brewster focuses on this crucial time period to ask: Was it through will or by accident, intention or coincidence, personal achievement or historical determinism that Lincoln freed the slaves?