What is the author's style in Lincoln by David Herbert Donald?

The perspective in "Lincoln" is historical, with the author looking back in history and attempting to reconstruct what was done and said based on contemporaneous sources. Wherever possible, Donald uses primary sources to describe the people and events he covers in "Lincoln," providing a first-person perspective for much of the material.

As a historian, Donald must sometimes maintain a skeptical or critical perspective, as when accounts of an event differ between sources. In these cases, the author sometimes offers his own opinion of which account is more likely or is better supported by the evidence and leaves it to the reader to decide the importance. At other times, Donald expresses his own opinion, as when he dismisses the importance of the differing accounts of Lincoln's writing and delivery of the Gettysburg Address. These brief occasions of Donald's own personal perspective are not common in the book, however.

Abraham Lincoln is a person about whom much has been written before, and around whom many legends and myths have been created. Donald's maintains a perspective that acknowledges these previous histories and the large amount of information already known about Lincoln as he attempts to differentiate his own account from those that came before.