The English-speaking world of the late 18th century was a political biographer’s dream. Great Britain and its American colonies overflowed with fascinating characters—impossibly learned and articulate figures with big personalities, strong opinions, bold ambitions, and a flair for the dramatic. The political arena in which they operated was the scene of a seemingly endless torrent of revolutionary upheaval. The challenge for a chronicler confronting this embarrassment of riches has less to do with assembling enough material to frame a narrative than with judiciously selecting the right material to make for a coherent story.
James Grant has risen to this challenge before, and his secret for doing so is an amateur’s eye for the telling detail. Grant is an economic journalist by profession, the man behind Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, a biweekly journal that has built up a cult following over more than four decades. His prior books have mostly focused on the markets, but he has also written several superb biographies, including John Adams: Party of One, published in 2005. That book’s chief virtue was expressed in its subtitle: with a keen sense of the dynamics of faction and party, Grant examined how Adams related to both allies and adversaries.
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His latest book, Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke
