At the turn of the twentieth century, historians unearthed a trove of letters by Abraham Lincoln that certified one of the best-known character traits of the sixteenth President—his remarkable ability to contain his anger, his refusal to permit bitterness to take a foothold, and his ability to practice forgiveness for the greater good. Lincoln lived his adult life as simultaneously one of America’s most famous and most ridiculed public figures. He had plenty of enemies…
In the brisk autumn of 1992, a couple of months before his inauguration, Bill Clinton’s motorcade pulled up to the Century City skyscraper in Los Angeles where Ronald Reagan had his post-presidential office. Clinton was spending a few days in town with friends and had sent word to Reagan, now eighty-one years old, that he wanted to stop by and chat. A meeting was quickly arranged. The two men were thirty-four years apart in age…