Dear Mr. President presents a delirious potpourri of 87 letters, written by people from all walks of life, from children to the working man to the very famous. This carefully selected batch of letters includes the letter from a ten year old Fidel Castro to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 requesting ten bucks; an offer from Annie Oakley to President McKinley to raise a company of fifty American lady sharpshooters in the event of a war with Spain; a scrawled...

Historian Ronald White examines Lincoln's astonishing oratory and explores his growth as a leader, a communicator, and a man of deepening spiritual conviction. Examining a different speech, address, or public letter in each chapter, White tracks the evolution of Lincoln's rhetoric from the measured, lawyerly tones of the First Inaugural to the haunting, immortal poetry of the Gettysburg Address. As a speaker who appealed not to intellect alone, but...