Books about Lincoln, Douglass, Lee Win 2008 Lincoln Prize

Two books offering new insights into the lives of three of the Civil War era's most compelling figures will share the 2008 Lincoln Prize, which is endowed by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman and administered by Gettysburg College.

For their books about Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Robert E. Lee, the winners are James Oakes, a professor at the City University of New York, for "The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics," and diplomat/historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor for "Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters."

Each author will receive $20,000 and a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens life-size bust, "Lincoln the Man." An honorable mention and $10,000 prize will go to Chandra Manning, a professor at Georgetown University, for his book "What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War." A formal ceremony will take place April 1 in New York City. The Lincoln Prize is one of the nation's most generous awards in the field of American history.