White whale for a blackout (cbr12bingo 2: white whale)

This is a door stopper of a book at 754 pages, but I’ve read longer books quicker. I don’t read enough history, and despite my historian father being obsessed with the civil war in particular, I know the highlights and half-remembered tidbits from AP history.  Team of Rivals has been THE Lincoln book since its publication, so it seemed like a good enough place to start.
So I did.  Years ago.  And this whale got beached.
I’m glad I finished it, but it is a slow starter.  I think it would have made more sense to structure it like a novel, meeting our non-Lincoln “characters” in the context of his presidency, because initially I couldn’t keep anyone straight.  (Goodwin doesn’t help matters by spending as much ink on Kate Chase as on her father, and introducing Z-list players in the Lincoln era for sentences and then never again).
But the last 250 pages were finished in half the time of the first 50.  Despite having passed the second grade and thus knowing what happens, I found myself flipping pages in the hopes that somehow, Lincoln would decide to stay home with a book instead of seeing Our American Cousin.  (Side note, I use “but other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?” all the time, if that tells you anything about my sense of humor). This gives you such a sense of who Lincoln was, but he’s one of many players in his cabinet, so I kept getting irritated when the focus shifted to anyone else.  I might need a Lincoln biography next time I go whale hunting.