A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win
by Shelby Steele
Free Press, 160 pp., $22.00
In this book completed in the final months of 2007, Steele conveys that his deepest worry is not about Obama's political chances but about his personal authenticity.
Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America
by Allen C. Guelzo
Simon & Schuster, 416 pp., $26.00
Guelzo takes his readers on an in-depth tour of the 1858 Senate campaign that made Lincoln a household name in the East and paved the way for his emergence as an unlikely candidate for the Republican nomination two years later.