Hope for the best.

Expect the worst.

Some bring champagne, some die of hers.

No way of knowing which way it's going.

Hope for the best expect the worst. Welcome to the commentary magazine daily

podcast. We are doing special podcasts this week because a bunch of us are away and so we are pre-taping and today's

podcast we are going to dedicate to the topic of our favorite biographies.

What biographies have we read in the course of our lives that have meant the most to us?

I'm not now here talking about the greatest of biographies. I mean there are books that sort of you can name as like legitimately great works of art that are biographies, you know obviously Boswell's life of Johnson being probably the most famous or Plutarch's lives or Alan Bullock's legendary biography of Hitler.

So here, I'm not trying to sort of figure out what is the best

biography ever written, just maybe what biography meant, or biographies, you don't have to hold to one

if my fellow panelists here don't wish to, and those panelists of course are executive editor a

Greenwald hi aib

i jon

Washington commentary columnist math kondetti hi Matt i don't

senior editor Seth mandel hi Hi Seth. Hi, John. And media commentary columnist

Christine, Hi Christine. Hi, Christine. So Christine, you are up first with your

favorite biography or fees.

Okay, I'm glad by the way that we can pull a John like we do with recommend, like you do sometimes with recommendations

and add a few because it was a difficult assignment. I don't read a ton of biographies. I suspect you all have

read far more political biographies. I have a favorite political biography which is Gene

Edwards-Smith's biography of Eisenhower, which I think is fantastic.

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