Forge of Empires: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and the World They Made, 1861-1871

In the space of a single decade, three leaders liberated tens of millions of souls, remade their own vast countries, and altered forever the forms of national power:

• Abraham Lincoln freed a subjugated race and transformed the American Republic.
• Tsar Alexander II broke the chains of the serfs and brought the rule of law to Russia.
• Otto von Bismarck threw over the petty Teutonic princes, defeated the House of Austria and the last of the imperial Napoleons, and united the German nation.

Th...