On February 27, 1860, at New York's Cooper Union, an awkward Illinois lawyer politician in a rumpled poorly-fitting suit delivered a "political lecture" to a curious audience of the city's political and cultural elite. In less than three months, the Republican Party would nominate Abraham Lincoln as its Presidential candidate.

Lincoln would later comment that "Cooper Union . . . made me President." This book, which includes previously unpublished background material, explains why this was the case. For, although it lacked the focused eloquence of his Gettysburg and Second Inaugural addresses, the speech's effect on United States history was just as great.

Here is Lincoln at a crucial point in his life: the careful draftsman who insisted that his speech's text as delivered should not be changed "to a hair's breadth;" the teller of funny stories whose eyes displayed to a new acquaintance an "inexpressible depth of sadness;" and a man who publicly deprecated his political chances but whose self-reliance, self-esteem and "unbounded ambition" drove him toward the nation's highest office.

Pulitzer Prize winner James McPherson praises this "wonderful book" as "an important contribution to Lincoln scholarship." Historian Walter Isaacson calls it "insightful" and explains: "Corry ́s narrative provides historical context, narrative drama and a cogent analysis of one of the seminal texts of our nation ́s history." And National Trust for Historic Preservation president Richard Moe describes the book as "wonderfully readable," and adds: "Corry has shed important new light on Lincoln ́s pivotal Cooper Union speech."