"This book attempts to recover ... the personalities and lives of the sons of Abraham and Mary Lincoln. It is the story of four boys, [Robert, Edward, William and Thomas called Tad] born into a typical American family in the eighteen forties and fifties and their growing up, first in a primitive little town in Illinois and then in the White House, the storm center of the nation engaged in a great civil war ... After the assassination of Lincoln the strangely tangled lives of the eldest and youngest sons are followed to the end"--Foreword.