Oscars Week 2013: Team of Rivals

The books I chose to read for this year's Oscar week were chosen somewhat at random, but in the end it worked out to be almost a science. I wanted to read books that had movies that were nominated for best picture. Because I don't like to see a movie before reading the book, I wanted these to be movies that I hadn't actually seen. It also went by what I could find at at the library.

And while I normally try to avoid book covers with the movie image on them, it's appropriate for this week to show you that cover with my review.

 

image source

 

The Book: Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Nominated For: Actor In a Leading Role, Actor in a Supporting Role, Actress In a Supporting Role, Best Picture, Cinematography, Costume Design, Directing, Film Editing, Music (Original Score), Production Design, Sound Mixing, Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

 

Book Review: History is an interesting thing, and the point that Doris Kearns Goodwin best makes in Team of Rivals is that history relies on context, and we need that to understand the bigger picture. In the introduction to the book, she says, "Without the march of events that led to the Civil War, Lincoln still would have been a good man, but most likely would never have been publicly recognized as a great man. It was history that gave him the opportunity to manifest his greatness, providing the stage that allowed him to shape and transform our national life."

 

Yes. History gave him the opportunity to manifest his greatness. But this is something that we can't understand until there is context, and we can only see his greatness by looking at how this history, Abraham Lincoln's history, shaped his world and the world to come. When we look back at the decisions made by that generation, the lives they led, and the world they lived in, we have to look at everything to truly understand the history there. What I enjoyed about Team of Rivals was the amount of context Kearns provided, the details about all of the major players to help me understand more about this fascinating time in America's history, and the man behind it.

 

Book vs. Movie: "Lincoln" was one of the Oscar movies I wanted to see, and I can see how the movie would still be able to provide a lot of the context that Team of Rivals has, but in a visual way instead of a more biographical way. The movie would be able to show the time period and give us the context of history in a different way than the book does while still getting the same points across.