When Andrew Johnson succeeded Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United States, he faced a nearly impossible task: to reconcile the nation after the Civil War while working with a recalcitrant Congress controlled by the Radical Republicans. In her new biography, Annette Gordon-Reed--a leading historian of slavery in the United States--illustrates Johnson's pivotal moments and missed opportunities. A professor of law at New York Law School, Gordon-Reed won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, co-author with Vernon Jordan of Vernon Can Read!, and the editor of Race on Trial.