This is a pretty good Fresh Air interview with historian Eric Foner. He basically talks about historical analogies to the Obama election and inauguration (the title and copy on the NPR website is wrong; he hardly talks about “post-Civil War disappointments,” presumably the subject of his newest book).
What makes the interview so much fun is that he really goes after points of view that he disagrees with. He really undresses the popular Goodwin idea of Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” (it was commonplace at the time, plus it was dysfunctional), and uses the analogy of Obama to Lincoln to skewer our contemporary political culture (inaugurations didn’t used to involve preachers; Lincoln was never a member of a church; etc.).