Jonathan Yardley

Jonathan Yardley (born October 27, 1939) is an American author and former book

Yardley graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, he was a member of St. Anthony Hall^[2] and was the editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, in 1961.

Career

After leaving Chapel Hill, Yardley interned at the

Yardley is the author of several books, among them biographies of

Yardley is known simultaneously as a scathingly frank critic and a starmaker. Among the talents he has brought to public light and championed are Michael Chabon, Edward P. Jones, Anne Tyler, William Boyd, Olga Grushin and John Berendt. He wrote a famously harsh review of Joe McGinniss' book The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy, saying "Not merely is it a textbook example of shoddy journalistic and publishing ethics; it is also a genuinely, unrelievedly rotten book, one without a single redeeming virtue, an embarrassment that should bring nothing except shame to everyone associated with it."^[3][4]

In February 2003, Yardley began a series called "Second Reading",^[5] described as “An occasional series in which The Post’s book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.” Every month or so, for the next seven years, he published essays about notable books from the past, many of which had gone out of print or were in some way seen as worth reading again.^[6] It was in this series that he gained attention for his highly critical look at The Catcher in the Rye in 2004.^[7] A collection of the Second Reading columns was published by Europa Editions in July 2011.

On December 5, 2014, Yardley announced his retirement as book critic of the Post.^[8]

Publications

Books

• Second Reading: Notable and Neglected Books Revisited. New York: Europa Editions, 2011.
  ISBN 978-1-60945-008-3
• Monday Morning Quarterback. Lanham:
  ISBN 978-0847692040
• Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley. New York:
  ISBN 978-0679439493
• Out of Step: Notes From a Purple Decade. New York: Random House, 1993.
  ISBN 978-0-517-10628-0
• States of Mind: A Personal Journey Through the Mid-Atlantic. Villard Publishing, 1993.
  ISBN 978-0394589114
• Our Kind of People: The Story of an American Family. New York:
  ISBN 978-1555841744
• Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner. New York: Random House, 1977.
  ISBN 978-0394498119

• ISBN 978-0679413158

• Michael Dirda
• Ron Charles

References

External links

• Inventory of the Jonathan Yardley Papers, 1792-2006, in the Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill.
• Jonathan Yardley at
  IMDb
• Interview at Washington Technology
• Book reviews, by Yardley at The Washington Post
• Appearances on C-SPAN