Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not a work of scholarship, May 11, 2006
I hope this was not intended to be a serious historical analysis of the life of John Jay. The writing is high school level, at best. The book abounds in typographical or factual errors: "Louis IV revoked the Treaty of Nantes ...", for example. I have no doubt Mr. Webster, about whom there is no biographical information, is a sincere evangelical Christian. John Jay was also a sincere Christian, but he was an Anglican. Indeed, he was one of the founders of the Episcopal Church on the national level in this country, a fact ignored by Webster. I don't think the Jays would have been comfortable with Webster's description of their marriage: "Sally and John went through the storms of life as a great team because they had that deep faith in Jesus Christ. When things came up in their lives that was [sic] too difficult for them to bear, they had someone to turn to: Jesus Christ. Jesus was their peace, their rock, their fortress." Jay was a Trinitarian, one of the few of the leading "founding fathers" of our country that we know absolutely was a Trinitarian, but he used 18th Century terms like Almighty and Maker to describe God, not the familiar "Jesus" of Webster's 20th Century evangelicalism.
Yes, Chief Justice John Jay clearly did love God, but it is no more wise to sugar coat his flaws, as Webster clearly does on the issue of his owning slaves into the 19th Century, for example, than it is to ignore his religious beliefs, as some biographers do.
Don't buy this book. It is a total waste of money. Walter Stahr's book, John Jay, addresses the great man's religious beliefs much more accurately and it provides the appropriate context for them in the life of the man.
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3 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A book for the serious student of US Judicial history, July 14, 2003
A book for the serious student with indepth research amd scholarship, Phil Webster has succeeded in doing what many have not, unearthing the faith,brillance and strong moral character which helped John Jay to not only endure so many personal tragedies, but accomplish so much for our nation in it's very early years that we as a nation owe him a great amount of gratitude. As laided out masterfully, Phil Webster shows how John Jay was fearless and willing to do what was right. This a book belongs on the shelves of colleges and universities for those students doing serious indepth research papers on US judicial history
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8 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Just a polemic, and a badly written one, at that., December 27, 2002
By A Customer
This is neither a biography of jay, nor a history of his times, but a polemic intended to show that, because John Jay was a Christian, the Founders could not have believed in separation of church and state. As you might expect of one who holds such a thesis, the author writes at about a sixth-grade level. Actually, it reads a lot like "1066 and All That," but this author is deadly serious, and deadly dull. I didn't get very far into the book before deciding to return it, and I would give it zero stars if that were possible.
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