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The Life of John Hay


In search of a new book for our reading group, I found this interesting new title, All the Great Prizes, which chronicles the extraordinary career of John Hay, who served presidential administrations from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt.  You'd be pretty hard pressed to find another figure in American history who had this much access to political power, yet few persons know him or have paid much interest in him since he passed away in 1905.  Hay is probably best known for the biography he wrote of Lincoln.

Of course, the blog is open to other suggestions, so please feel free to present books you think would make for a good discussion.

Comments

  1. I have had my eye on this one, and will probably buy it. I'm fascinated by Hay -- he was one of the "five of hearts," a book I loved. I'm just not sure I can commit to reading it with all the other reading I'm doing now.

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  2. 673 pages ???

    Sounds interesting but a bit detailed.

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  3. It was a long life in politics, but I imagine the reading total is closer to 500.

    Open to other suggestions.

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  4. I put in a hold request at my local library. Waiting list appears to be for only 2 people this time. Hopefully, it will be available soon.

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  5. I had been waiting for a long while to get my hands on Frothingham's "Life of Jospeh Warren" and it finally came thru inter library loan. I only have 3 weeks in which to read this large book and cannot renew. Therefore, I won't have time to read Taliferro. Perhaps we can save it for another time.

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  6. Seems like Av is on sabbatical, so we can keeping tossing titles around for awhile. No reason to commit.

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