"All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay"

[Linda Anderson]

There's a review by Thomas Mallon of All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, From Lincoln to Roosevelt by John Taliaferro in today's New York Times.

"Taliaferro resists the whipped-cream rosettes of Hay’s own prose and does a sturdy job laying out the foreign policy of a new American empire, though his narrative — especially where the canal is concerned — has a tendency to take the long way round Cape Horn instead of finding some isthmus to cut through. Resisting hagiography, though not by much, he settles for a corrective approach that seeks to liberate Hay from his status as a historical 'Zelig in the corner of someone else’s portrait.'”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/books/...d=all&_r=0