Useless Penguins

I raved a few days ago about Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. Don't buy it. It's brilliant, revelatory even, but when you get to page 460 of the Penguin edition, you get a terrific sense of déjà vu. Instead of the run-up to the Emancipation proclamation, we get pages 413-460 all over again. After that, it's essentially 'once out of the escape-proof hole'. Aaaagggghhhhh