https://jonathanmckay.com/tags/biography/Recent content in Biography on Jonathan McKayHugoen-usSat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/william-howard-taft-the-american-presidents-%2327/Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/william-howard-taft-the-american-presidents-%2327/Rule-Follower, Wrong Job It may be that nobody wanted to be president less than Taft. “I love judges, and I love courts. They are my ideals, that typifyhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/warren-g.-harding-the-american-presidents-%2329/Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/warren-g.-harding-the-american-presidents-%2329/Press president, buried by press This biography makes you root for Harding as a person more than most presidents. The author’s core project—rehabilitatinghttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/woodrow-wilson-a-biography/Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/woodrow-wilson-a-biography/The History Scholar Who Lost History There are few presidents whose stories read like tragedies: Lincoln, Nixon, LBJ. Woodrow Wilson is one of them. Whathttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-autobiography-of-calvin-coolidge/Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-autobiography-of-calvin-coolidge/The Most Boring President The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge is an odd document—less a presidential memoir than a meditation on restraint. Coolidgehttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/fdr/Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/fdr/FDR in Soft Focus I went into this book wanting to understand Franklin Roosevelt after watching his enormous footprints on other lives, from TR tohttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/open/Fri, 04 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/open/Topspin and Emotional Spin Even for tennis prodigies, the odds of making it are astronomically low—maybe one in ten thousand. Both Agassi and Sampras beathttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/truman/Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/truman/This isn't Robert Caro, but it's still pretty good. Truman is probably the most relatable president I've read about. And as we enter into the twilight ofhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/means-of-ascent-the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-%232/Fri, 21 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/means-of-ascent-the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-%232/Johnson is the villain, Stevenson is the hero, and it's not a happy ending.https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-path-to-power-the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-%231/Sun, 02 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-path-to-power-the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-%231/This is Game of Thrones for biographies, glad there are 3 more left.https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/long-walk-to-freedom/Mon, 14 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/long-walk-to-freedom/Took a bit to get started, but a worthwhile long walk of a book in the end.https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/deng-xiaoping-and-the-transformation-of-china/Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/deng-xiaoping-and-the-transformation-of-china/History's Finest Bureaucrat 冷静观察，站稳脚跟，沉着应付，韬光养晦，善于守拙，绝不当头，有所作为 Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bidehttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/becoming/Wed, 04 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/becoming/politics by a non politician who becomes a politician fed up with politics. good readhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/a-promised-land/Sat, 23 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/a-promised-land/13th book of 2021: Director’s Cut Most of us suspect that we are pawns in a larger game. For me, the only advantage of working in the State Department washttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/battle-hymn-of-the-tiger-mother/Mon, 30 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/battle-hymn-of-the-tiger-mother/81st, 82nd books of 2020: Work = Success China does well with standard education. In the 2018 PISA results, China Singapore, Macao, and Hong Kong scoredhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/little-soldiers-an-american-boy-a-chinese-school-and-the-global-race-to-achieve/Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/little-soldiers-an-american-boy-a-chinese-school-and-the-global-race-to-achieve/81st, 82nd books of 2020: Work = Success China does well with standard education. In the 2018 PISA results, China Singapore, Macao, and Hong Kong scoredhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-twelve-caesars/Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-twelve-caesars/49th book of 2020: Millenia of bad emperors Quoted as a primary source often enough to warrant a read. For a work nearly 2000 years old, it remainshttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/genghis-khan-and-the-making-of-the-modern-world/Tue, 27 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/genghis-khan-and-the-making-of-the-modern-world/71st book of 2020. Tidy History of an Important Story, Perhaps Too Tidy The story of Genghis Khan is of course amazing. If I could start over withhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/colonel-roosevelt-theodore-roosevelt-%233/Sat, 05 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/colonel-roosevelt-theodore-roosevelt-%233/44th, 47th, 51st books of 2020: Roosevelt Trilogy: The most interesting American Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t supposed to be president. Coming from a wealthyhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/theodore-rex/Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/theodore-rex/44th, 47th, 51st books of 2020: Roosevelt Trilogy: The most interesting American Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t supposed to be president. Coming from a wealthyhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-rise-of-theodore-roosevelt-theodore-roosevelt-%231/Sat, 08 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-rise-of-theodore-roosevelt-theodore-roosevelt-%231/44th, 47th, 51st books of 2020: Roosevelt Trilogy: The most interesting American Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t supposed to be president. Coming from a wealthyhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/grant/Fri, 15 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/grant/27th book of 2020: This man Fights. Grant was not destined to rise through the ranks. Had the civil war not created a dire need for somebody, (anybody!)https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/meditations/Fri, 15 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/meditations/A masterclass in equanimity. This was never meant to be a book, so I read it as series of 'notes to self' on how to live life, and strive for happinesshttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/when-breath-becomes-air/Sat, 05 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/when-breath-becomes-air/At first I thought it was a bit pretentious, but by the end I felt that Kalanithi got to the non-fiction equivalent of the hero's journey. Death is thehttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/fear-trump-in-the-white-house/Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/fear-trump-in-the-white-house/Good summary, I feel like I haven’t missed anything after skipping out on the news for the last two years. Now I’ll continue to tune out and wait for thehttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/leonardo-da-vinci/Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/leonardo-da-vinci/I thought I would have liked this book. I’m interested in the person and the era. However the frequent lapses into comparing Leonardo to other innovatorshttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/strange-stones-dispatches-from-east-and-west/Mon, 27 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/strange-stones-dispatches-from-east-and-west/Refreshing. Picked up this book on a recommendation from Jason ([b:Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China's Version of Twitter|15824230|Blockedhttps://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-andromeda-strain-andromeda-%231/Tue, 22 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000https://jonathanmckay.com/reviews/the-andromeda-strain-andromeda-%231/This week, my wife tested positive for COVID. We don't know where she got it, may as well have been outer space. I watched our internal quarantine