I’ve not done it, but I can pretty safely assume that it’s really hard to write an in-depth, full-scale, 700-page biography. To do so with a fluid, readable, often inspiring and emotional narrative is a feat that even fewer biographers can pull off. Ron White has impressively done just that in A. Lincoln.

I’ve read a lot of Lincoln books (and there’s plenty more sitting in piles on the floor of my office) and I can pretty easily say that White’s 2009 book is the best of the bunch. David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln is often considered the leader of the pack, but it’s often dry. Lincoln comes across as a somewhat statuesque character; it lacks feeling.

The best biographies, in my opinion, not only convey facts in an organized way, but provide a depth of emotion that allows you to feel for the subject in some way—even if the person is contemptible (like Lyndon Johnson in Robert Caro’s famous series). What Ron White so magnificently does here is capture Lincoln’s utter humanity and decency. The era comes alive and we see Lincoln as the impoverished young boy, the frontier lawyer, the budding and pragmatic politician, the surprise president, the wartime leader, the reluctant abolitionist. Through it all, we see how Lincoln evolved, how he educated himself, how he stayed humble in the midst of having more power than any other man in America, and so much more.

At the end, while reading about that infamous night at the theater, White had me in tears. I obviously knew the ending of Lincoln’s story, but White made him come alive so vividly that I was surprisingly emotional when it came to our 16th president’s untimely death.

White doesn’t explicitly make the case for Lincoln as our greatest president, but it’s hard to come away from this book without holding that (correct!) opinion.

A. Lincoln immediately found its way to my top few favorite presidential biographies. I can’t recommend it highly enough.