Author Burlingame wins 2010 Lincoln Prize

Michael Burlingame, a former professor at Connecticut College, has won the 2010 Lincoln Prize for his two-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln that was 30 years in the making. Burlingame, considered one of the foremost living authorities on Abraham Lincoln, will receive the $50,000 Lincoln Prize for his book, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Johns Hopkins University Press), as well as a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' life-size bust, "Lincoln the Man."

Burlingame is the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The prize, sponsored by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, will be awarded April 27 at the Union League in New York. The book is a comprehensive look at Lincoln's life from an impoverished childhood in rural Kentucky and Indiana to his career as an ambitious politician that led him to become the 16th president of the United States. Past Lincoln Prize winners include Ken Burns in 1991 for his documentary, "The Civil War," and Doris Kearns Goodwin in 2006 for her book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."