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Todd Brewster has had a remarkable career in both journalism and academia. He worked with both Life magazine and ABC News as a Senior Editor and Producer. When he was with ABC News he teamed with Peter Jennings on two monumental projects, The Century and In Search of America. The Century and In Search of America were mini-series that aired on the History Channel and ABC. In conjunction with the mini-series Todd Brewster and Peter Jennings wrote two bestselling books, The Century and In Search of America. In 2008, Brewster became the Don E. Ackerman Director of Oral History at the United States Military Academy. Brewster established a video archive of including veterans from World War II up to our most recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to his responsibilities at West Point, Brewster is the Director of The Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. The Project brings in 40 Jennings Fellows each year to study the Constitution in depth. The Project is committed to helping journalists understand how the Constitution reaches into every American's life.

On September 9, 2014 Scribner will publish Brewster's new book entitled [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451693869/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1451693869&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=IEROMXKBVSSC6TDU Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War]. Brewster's book explores the six months when Lincoln struggled with the war, his cabinet, and how best to free the slaves.

So all of that made me interested in studying the document and its history more deeply. Then I found that the six months between July 1862 and January 1863 served as a neatly contained episode of Lincoln’s life in that they framed the time when he first mentioned the Proclamation and the date when he actually signed the document. More than that, those six months were some of the most turbulent for Lincoln, the nation, and the war. When the book begins, he is still mourning the death of his son, Willie, who succumbed to typhoid in February and in fact the opening scene is a carriage ride to the funeral of another child – this, the infant son of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton – who also died of typhoid. The climactic battle of Antietam falls in September of this year, the mid-term elections in November and Lincoln’s muddled address to the nation in December. Through all of this time, he is undergoing a spiritual, emotional and political crisis. What drama!

'''Are there any themes or ideas from The Century and In Search of America that you see in Lincoln’s Gamble? Both The Century and In Search of America were trying to decode America, does Lincoln’s Gamble also try to do this?'''