To the Bramble and the Briar is a magical biography that renders the development of Abraham Lincoln’s vision in all of its clumsiness and beauty. We see Lincoln as unromanticized, deeply human—whether reading Shakespeare out loud at the bottom of a well or sitting with a bucket over his head after Bull Run. We meet Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman, as well as unnamed witnesses: a courtroom stenographer typing Lincoln’s words in Illinois; a teenage girl lifted out of slavery by a kite in the shape of a swordfish; and two anonymous workers charged with opening Lincoln’s grave. With young Tad Lincoln, we see—as a man is tarred and feathered, his two sons standing by—that ‘One day the world ends / right in front of you.’ Especially poignant—both funny and filled with sorrow—is the love story between Mary and Abraham, a husband who would come to his wife’s room “every night to kiss / at nine-thirty and then / at ten to undo her / some more.”