Eminent Lives

Listener Reviews

1. 5.0(1)

   Condensed and coherent, well written and well researched. Very pleasant read.

   As a long time biography reader, I enjoyed this book very much. It’s much shorter than standard biographies, and manages to capture the essence of the characters well.

   Sophie Elder · September 22, 2024

2. 4.0(1)

   A little too short

   It’s a little tough to distill the lives of such huge figures into small, 3-5 hour biographies. It gets the job done, although the brevity is a bit disappointing

   Kelly Mcleod · August 2, 2024

3. 5.0(1)

   This helps me understand America much better

   Very well done. I learned a lot and understand so much more about our country. I think everyone in the US would benefit from this series.

   Lucy Gustafson · May 21, 2023

4. 5.0(1)

   Great history

   This is another great listen for anyone interested in presidental history. Each review is not too long but you feel you still get a great deal of history about each man.

   Anahi Andrews · November 24, 2022

5. 3.0(1)

   3 Books, 3 Authors, 3 Reviews and 2, 4, 3 Stars

   George Washington by Paul Johnson (2 Stars **) "Washington remains a remote and mysterious figure. He puzzled those who knew and worked with him, and who often disagreed violently about his merits and abilities. He puzzles us. No man's mind is so hard to enter and dwell within." ― Paul Johnson, George Washington Paul Johnson's micro-biography of George Washington is one of the first in HarperCollins’ “Eminent Lives” series of biographies "by distinguished authors on canonical figures." I first picked this book up with Christopher Hitchens' Eminent Lives biography of Thomas Jefferson. So, essentially I made my way to Mt Vernon because it was on the way to Monticello. All in all the biography was a very good, very basic biography. I can only say (recognizing what it is, and the limits a book on Washington will face, from the beginning) I was only really seriously disappointed twice. Once when Johnson lectured about how Washington would have felt about the 1st amendment, and for a couple pages the book devolved into a polemic of how X interpretation would have "angered Washington". The second part was when again, later he argues that "an America without religion as the strongest voluntary source of morality was to him an impossibility" and goes on to soft peddle the idea that immigrants were tolerated by and enlightened Washington, but he adds "but new arrivals had to recognize that they were joining a community under God -- or Providence --- ... and the paramount mode of worship of this God was Christian." Here Paul Johnson has fully dropped any pretense of being an historian, and has completely abandoned his introductory statement about the difficulty of entering and dwelling in Washington's mysterious mind. It is here Johnson shows up as a public intellectual with an agenda to indelicately push. I felt a bit like I had fallen into a G.K. Chesterton biography of Washington, but without all the charming puns and paradoxes. It is natural for those on the left and the right, for those of faith or those without faith, to want to adopt the image and the history of the founding fathers and to use their myths and histories together to support a current position or agenda (whether religious or political) or to argue against a current morality. THAT impulse is one of my biggest complaints against modern, popular history, and the main reason I didn't give this short biography even three stars. ____________________________________ Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens (4 Stars ****) "Jefferson was to emerge as the republican equivalent of a philosopher king, who was coldly willing to sacrifice all principles and all allegiances to the one great aim of making America permanent.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America ***Warning: This part of the review is primarily about Christopher Hitchens: Christopher Hitchens was a force. He never quietly held opinions. Rather, Hitch preferred to harangue and harpoon his readers with them. He bloodied and sometimes bullied people with words. He smacked the unprepared and unrepentant with his arguments so often, and so beautifully, that -- agree or not with him -- both his critics and fans alike were usually left with the dizzied by dents of his ideas and the rattle of his arguments for the rest of their life. Hitch was also, as far as imports go, one of those great American imports from England. I think of Thomas Paine and W.H. Auden as great trades the US made with our mother country. He didn't just come to America. He came here, like a baby born screaming. He loved his adopted country and cried loud and hard all the time about it. He was gifted as a writer and gifted as a thinker. He also carried his idols close. He loved Trotsky. He adored Thomas Paine (and wrote a similar sized biography (Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography) on Paine's famous pamphlet. He loved to write books about people he loved (Orwell, Jefferson, Paine) or hated (Mother Theresa, Henry Kissinger, the Clintons). He was a man who wrote from a passion that was informed by the head. In many ways, that talent for writing based on passion perfectly matches Thomas Jefferson to Christopher Hitchens. ***OK: This part of the review is a bit more about Jefferson: Hitchens is able to deliver a fine tribute to the author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States, founder of the University of Virginia, Louisiana purchaser, etc. In this age where Hamilton is getting a lot of love, it is important to go back and remember that both men were pivotal not only in the founding, but on its development and course (for both good and bad). A couple things I learned from reading Hitch's micro-biography: * Thomas Jefferson and his wife Martha took 'an early mutual delight' with Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. This is an opinion I share, but evidently NOT Christopher Hitchens. * While I knew that a 22-year-old lieutenant colon

   Stacie Galloway · November 19, 2022

6. 3.0(1)

   Above Average

   Although this book didn't wow me, I did like it and I enjoyed this listen, especially the first part.

   Marcella Boyle · November 3, 2022

7. 5.0(1)

   Great book.

   Loved it. Listened to it twice, the history lessons are here for today's leaders in Washington DC.

   Julianne Joyner · April 12, 2022

8. 4.0(1)

   Fun, informative, and uniquely refreshing.

   A brief yet engaging introduction into the lives of three prominent Americans. Each piece is crafted thoughtfully with details and points of view which are often mistakenly thought to be of less importance by some contemporary historians. Generally, it is an enjoyable trip into history.

   Aria Jayde · August 18, 2021