In the winter of 18601 the United States fell apart, divided by differing attitudes to slavery Four years later, at a cost of six hundred thousand lives, the bloodiest war in history had secured the Union and slavery was abolished Throughout, Lincoln was the lynchpin of this pivotal change in the nation This biography tells the story of how Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin and almost entirely self educated, rose, in the nation's gravest hour, to determine its fate, only to die at the hands of an assassin in the moment of victory