"I love a good meaty biography, especially one that encompasses a grand sweep of history." ~Michael

If Henry James or Edith Wharton had written a novel describing the accomplished and glamorous life and times of John Hay, it would have been thought implausible—a novelist’s fancy. Nevertheless, John Taliaferro’s brilliant biography captures the extraordinary life of Hay, one of the most amazing figures in American history, and restores him to his rightful place.


John Hay was both witness and author of many of the most significant chapters in American history— from the birth of the Republican Party, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War, to the prelude to the First World War. Much of what we know about Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt comes to us through the observations Hay made while private secretary to one and secretary of state to the other. With All the Great Prizes, the first authoritative biography of Hay in eighty years, Taliaferro has turned the lens around, rendering a rich and fascinating portrait of this brilliant American and his many worlds.


Hay’s friends are a who’s who of the era: Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, Henry Adams, Henry James, and virtually every president, sovereign, author, artist, power broker, and robber baron of the Gilded Age. As an ambassador and statesman, he guided many of the country’s major diplomatic initiatives at the turn of the twentieth century: the Open Door with China, the creation of the Panama Canal, the establishment of America as a world leader.


Hay’s peers esteemed him as “a perfectly cut stone” and “the greatest prime minister this republic has ever known.” But for all his poise and polish, he had his secrets. His marriage to one of the wealthiest women in the country did not prevent him from pursuing the Madame X of Washington society, whose other secret suitor was Hay’s best friend, Henry Adams.

With this superb work, Taliaferro brings us an epic tale.

Michael  says:
"I love a good meaty biography, especially one that encompasses a grand sweep of history. All the Great Prizes is just that kind of biography. John Hay’s life and career began as an ardent young supporter of Abraham Lincoln, at the genesis of Abe’s rise to national prominence, all the way to serving as Secretary of State for Teddy Roosevelt. 

 

All the Great Prizes is also the story of love and friendship. I first learned of the five friends that were at the heart of Hay’s life (and who referred to themselves as the “Five of Hearts”) in the novel 1876 by Gore Vidal. A fascinating group that included John Hay and Henry Adams, and the woman they both loved and neither could have. This historical account of these five is even more intriguing than Vidal’s fictional rendering."

Lynn says this book is "the sort of biography that not only digs beneath the surface of the individual life described, but that holds up a very clear mirror to the times that that person is living in."

A Walden for the 21st century, the true story of a man who has radically reinvented "the good life".

In 2000, Daniel Suelo left his life savings-all thirty dollars of it-in a phone booth. He has lived without money-and with a newfound sense of freedom and security-ever since.

The Man Who Quit Money is an account of how one man learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyonlands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs-for shelter, food, and warmth-but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement. In retracing the surprising path and guiding philosophy that led Suelo into this way of life, Sundeen raises provocative and riveting questions about the decisions we all make, by default or by design, about how we live-and how we might live better.

Read an interview about Suelo HERE.

Lynn says:
"The Man Who Quit Money blends cultural and economic commentary, philosophy, wilderness adventure and psychology into a page-turning story that, for this reader, lodges into your consciousness as a 3-way intimate conversation between author (Mark Sundeen), his subject (Daniel Suelo) and the reader (albeit with the reader's 'input' on a silent but still very active plane, you might say).  In short, it's the sort of biography that not only digs beneath the surface of the individual life described, but that holds up a very clear mirror to the times that that person is living in.

Suelo's trajectory, from his evangelical Christian roots,  his studies at CU and along a winding spiritual path bringing him, one might say inexorably, to his paradoxically hermetic and socially engaged life today might well recall for some the stories of Christopher McCandless (the subject of John Krakauer's Into the Wild), Peace Pilgrim back in the '70s, of Mark Boyle (Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living ), Henry David Thoreau or, in some respects,  even of that famous moneyless man, 'El Poverello', St. Francis of Assisi. 

I vividly recall reading about Suelo in Jason Blevin's article for The Denver Post back in late 2009; "Moab Man Embraces Simple Life Living in Cave".  At the time I was taken aback by the strong reaction the article received by some... that this guy was some kind of 'parasite', living as he did out of dumpsters and utilizing the discards of the capitalist culture he eschews.  Sundeen's book makes such assessments a little harder to assert, given the complexity of this story.

I have to say I am one of those with a reaction more of wonder and curiosity as to how any of us might learn to live more simply and with a more profound connection to the natural world.  Evidenced by the surge in interest here in Denver around 'backyard homesteading' with beginner gardeners, beekeepers and chicken-keepers popping up everywhere, the 'Occupy' encampments comprised often of otherwise unemployed souls seeking community amongst their peers, as well as experimentation with bartering and freecycling, it's clear that Suelo is on to something.  For anyone who's ever spent time away from the city's relentless monetized hold on our psyches, whether for a short weekend backpacking trip or for months or years off the normal grid,  the liberating feeling of stepping 'outside the box' of the oft assumed 'end of history' globalized economy we take as an immutable law of the universe.  Daniel Suelo's story will bring up questions and maybe even a few answers as we navigate our way through the current permutation of our personal and collective relationship with that good ol' 'root of all evil', money."