THE BOOK

At around the time of Barack Obama's inauguration as President, Doris Kearns Goodwin was a guest on NBC's "Meet the Press." Since the new President had studied Abraham Lincoln, she was asked to compare the two. By my count, the presidential historian has written five books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning "No Ordinary Time," about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's gallantry during World War II. She not only knows her stuff (duh!), but she also is wonderfully articulate.

On this occasion, Kearns Goodwin was asked about her 2006 treatise on Abraham Lincoln, "Team of Rivals." She described how Lincoln managed to pull together a first-term cabinet that included bitter political rivals, virtually all of whom grew to respect and love the rail-splitter. The suggestion of the interview was that perhaps Barack Obama would capitalize on the lessons he learned from Lincoln and meet with equal success.

Based on that interview, I went out and bought the book. For me, it was a heavy read:

Text: 749 pages, including the Introduction, photos, maps and illustrations
Epilogue: 4 pages
Acknowledgements: 2-1/2 pages
Notes: 121 pages of tiny print
Illustration credits: 1 page
Index: 33 pages

I plowed into the book head-on, soon realizing that this would take a while. So as I have done in the past, I removed the jacket and whenever leaving the house I took it with me and tossed it onto the back seat of the car. One never knows when opportunity arises: waiting at the car wash, the doctor's office, the barber shop and -- my favorite -- those weekends when my wife and I both read our books together. Except, she's a faster reader. Once we went to the library together. She checked out three books and I pulled two. She easily read her three that weekend and I barely finished my two. More about that weekend in another post.

One reason that my wife reads faster than I do is how I read. It must be hard-wired in my DNA, for I note sentence structure, voice, grammar, etc. If all is well at first, the read flows well. If not, I watch for things. Doris Kearns Goodwin reads very, very well.

Reading a good book is a treat. It's visiting with someone who has a tale to tell, yet whose only presence in the room is the story unfolding before your eyes. Years ago I signed up for one of those book clubs that send you a new book every few weeks and automatically hit your credit card. I was working 12-hour days then, which begs the question, "If you have no time to read, why buy books?" My answer was, "Well, I should be reading more and one of these days I'll get to it." After a couple of years, I cancelled my account and the books sat on the shelves of my library, staring at me.

My boys were young then and playing soccer. I'd go to practice with them, but found that I actually enjoyed solitude more than sitting in the bleachers and listening to other parents yell the darndest things at their kids, the coaches, the referees and occasionally each other. My boys weren't that good at soccer and didn't play much anyway, so one afternoon I grabbed one of those dusty books and took it with me to practice. They consented to me sitting in the car, reading.

I'd never heard of this particular author and had forgotten most of what I learned in school about the dawn of civiization. In brief, it was a wonderful book. It was about 325 pages covering the the dawn of man through the Early Renaissance. To me, the most striking attribute was the writing: crisp, thoughtful, wonderfully descriptive and -- well, informative. I so admired the writing that I have read it three times. Since then, I have nearly always been working on a book of some kind. Some, like "Team of Rivals," take time. Others go more quickly.

As I said, reading a good book is a treat for me. Occasionally, I'd leave the house without the book and be immediately disappointed. But there's always the weekend. Or an evening. Or a doctor's office. And nearby, the book.