Surprisingly, the article on Lincoln’s state of mind in this month’s Atlantic Monthly turned out to be very interesting. Making valid inferences after the fact about what propelled a person to act in a particular way is difficult, to put it mildly. With hindsight everyone has perfect vision. Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Great Depression does not fall into the trap of inferring a grand thesis from one case. Looking at Lincoln’s entire life he finds one episode after another in which Lincoln does not overcome his melancholy for good, but rather learns to live with his sadness and to turn it into a creative force. Shenk argues that Lincoln’s depression forced him to analyze himself and the world around himself, giving him a deeper insight into reality that prepared Lincoln to see more accurately the challenges of his time. Think about this startling implication: if George W. Bush would get a bit depressed, we might all be much better off!