

She stated that she had been inspired to tell the stories of the four men (Seward, Chase, Bates, and Lincoln) together when realizing that the cabinet members had written extensive diaries and letters that might provide a "new angle" in Lincoln studies. Goodwin spent ten years on the research and writing of Team of Rivals.

In 1995, Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History for her book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, a similar study of personalities in the Roosevelt White House. Team of Rivals is the sixth book by American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. In 2012, a Steven Spielberg film based on the book was released to critical acclaim. US President Barack Obama cited it as one of his favorite books and was said to have used it as a model for constructing his own cabinet, although he later wrote this was not the reason he chose Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State. Goodwin's sixth book, Team of Rivals was well received by critics and won the 2006 Lincoln Prize and the inaugural Book Prize for American History of the New-York Historical Society. The book focuses on Lincoln's mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to abolition and victory in the American Civil War. Three of his Cabinet members had previously run against Lincoln in the 1860 election: Attorney General Edward Bates, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his cabinet from 1861 to 1865.

The book is a biographical portrait of U.S. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a 2005 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, published by Simon & Schuster.
