All the Great Prizes
The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
About the book
John Taliaferro traces the life of John Hay, private secretary to Abraham Lincoln and later secretary of state to Theodore Roosevelt, in the first authoritative account of him in eighty years. Hay witnessed and helped shape events from the birth of the Republican Party and the Civil War to the Spanish-American War and the years before World War I. As a diplomat he guided the Open Door with China and the creation of the Panama Canal. His friends included Mark Twain, Henry James, Horace Greeley and nearly every leading figure of the Gilded Age. Taliaferro also covers Hay's secrets, including his pursuit of the Madame X of Washington society, who was also secretly courted by his best friend, Henry Adams.
Ryan Holiday named it his favorite biography in his Best Book Recommendations of 2013, marveling that Hay went from a teenage assistant in Lincoln's law office to secretary of state.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)
It’s hard for me to recommend just one great biography this year, so I won’t even try. I’ll just start with this biography of John Hay, which was my favorite–though there were many close seconds. John Hay started as a teenage legal assistant in the law office of Abraham Lincoln. He ended his career as the Secretary of State for William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. How nuts is that? You can basically understand the entire period of American history from the Civil War through WWI through one man who saw it all. Great biography of politics, the press, and American society.
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