George McGovern looked for proof that Abraham Lincoln was both a great statesman and a brilliant politician when he wrote the newest addition to the American President book series, "Abraham Lincoln."

"I found plenty of evidence to support both those points of view," said McGovern. "Seeing those two sides of him helped provide a framework for my book."

The former U.S. senator and 1972 presidential candidate will talk about Lincoln and take questions from the audience during a book signing event at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Border's book store in Rapid City.

He's gratified that the book, which has been out for several months, has already outsold all the other books in the series.

Lincoln was the only president that McGovern, once a history professor, was interested in writing about.

"I think he's our greatest president and maybe our most interesting figure to ever occupy the White House," McGovern said.

When the book series' late editor, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., asked his longtime friend to write one of the presidential biographies, McGovern, 87, told him he was too busy with the worldwide anti-hunger school lunch program that he heads with former Sen. Bob Dole.

But Schlesinger challenged him to prove that McGovern's Ph.D in history from Northwestern University was better than the one that Schlesinger earned from Harvard University.

Unable to resist that challenge, McGovern said he'd only be interested in writing about Lincoln. Schlesinger replied, "Tough luck." President Bill Clinton had already agreed to write the book on Lincoln.

A year later, after Clinton decided he was too busy to write it, McGovern's phone rang again.

"It was a real honor to write about Lincoln," McGovern said. But hard to stay within the 165-page limit the editors imposed. "I had to cross out a lot of brilliant stuff," he said.

Paul Jensen, a Wall-area landowner and friend of McGovern's, said the book is "extremely well written."

"As a history professor, he's put it together so well," Jensen said.

Jensen said he learned numerous things about Lincoln's presidency that he never knew. Plenty of Lincoln biographies have focused on the Civil War that dominated his presidency, but McGovern made a point to pay attention to things that other biographers didn't, Jensen said.

During Lincoln's administration, America created the Homestead Act and passed the Land Grant College Act, which allowed for the creation of universities like South Dakota State University. It also founded the U.S. Department of Agriculture and built the Transcontinental railway, an amazing feat given that a Civil War was going on, McGovern said.

All those things shaped the future of South Dakota and many other states, McGovern said, making Lincoln's presidency even more fascinating to a politician from South Dakota.

At Borders, McGovern will give a short talk about Lincoln before taking questions from the audience.

If you go

What: Book signing by George McGovern for "Abraham Lincoln"

Where: Borders bookstore

When: 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 22