Tony Kushner 
Lincoln 
The Screenplay

“All forward thrust and hot-damn urgency…A brilliant, brawling epic. Screenwriter Tony Kushner blows the dust off history by investing it with flesh, blood, and churning purpose. . . . A great American movie.” –Peter Travers,
Rolling Stone


“
Lincoln is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece. And the genius of
Lincoln, finally, lies in its vision of politics as a noble, sometimes clumsy dialectic of the exalted and the mundane…And Mr. Kushner, whose love of passionate, exhaustive disputation is unmatched in the modern theater, fills nearly every scene with wonderful, maddening talk. Go see this movie.” –A.O. Scott,
New York Times


“A lyrical, ingeniously structured screenplay.
Lincoln is one of the most authentic biographical dramas I’ve ever seen…grand and immersive. It plugs us into the final months of Lincoln’s presidency with a purity that makes us feel transported as if by time machine.” –Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly



A decade-long collaboration between three-time Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner,
Lincoln is a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. Having just won re-election in a country divided, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of America, and generations, to come. Containing eight pages of color photos from the film and inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s critically acclaimed
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,
Lincoln is now a major motion picture by Dream Works starring two-time Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis.


Tony Kushner ‘s plays include
Angels in America, Parts One and Two;
A Bright Room Called Day;
Slavs!;
Homebody/Kabul;
Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s film of
Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg’s
Munich. Kushner is the recipient of a Pultizer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, and two Oscar nominations, among other honors. In 2008 he was the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.

About the author

Tony Kushner’s plays include
Angels in America;
Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Brown;
The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Corneille;
Slavs!;
A Bright Room Called Day;
Homebody/Kabul;
Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s film of
Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg’s
Munich and
Lincoln. His books include
The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and
Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
Among many honors, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.