Quick Take
- Narration: Reed Smith brings a respectful, unhurried quality to this early-twentieth-century missionary biography, clear and accessible without overclaiming the drama.
- Themes: Sacrifice and calling, wealth renounced for faith, the cost of conviction
- Mood: Reverent, historically grounded, quietly moving
- Verdict: A classic missionary biography that has shaped generations of evangelical readers, made newly accessible in this audio edition narrated with care.
There are books that operate differently depending on the age at which you encounter them, and Borden of Yale is one of them. I first heard about William Borden years ago through a passing reference in a college seminar on literature and vocation. A Yale graduate who walked away from a family fortune, trained as a missionary, and died in Egypt at twenty-five before ever reaching the people he’d set out to serve. The story has the shape of tragedy if you approach it from outside, and the shape of completion if you approach it from within the tradition that produced it. Mrs. Howard Taylor’s biography, originally published in 1926, was written from the inside.
I listened to this over several evenings, and what struck me most was how the book manages to be genuinely moving across very different kinds of readers. The Kenneth Taylor foreword, which opens with the remarkable claim that the book “changed the course of my life” spiritually, sets the tone honestly. This is a book that has mattered to real people for nearly a hundred years, and Reed Smith’s narration keeps faith with that legacy without overplaying it.
The Man Behind the Fortune He Walked Away From
William Borden was the heir to the Borden dairy fortune, which in the early twentieth century was genuine wealth of the kind that came with social obligations and assumptions about the life one would lead. He attended Yale and Princeton Seminary with all of that behind him, yet the biography traces a consistent trajectory away from the life that wealth made possible toward something his contemporaries found either admirable or incomprehensible. The synopsis notes that his death at twenty-five was covered by nearly every newspaper in the United States, which tells you something about both the newsworthiness of his choices and the shock value of his end.
What Taylor does well is to show Borden not as a remote saint but as a specific person with specific habits and relationships. The letters quoted throughout carry the texture of real correspondence: practical, occasionally funny, sometimes tired. Borden was not a man given to florid spiritual rhetoric, and Taylor’s choice to let his own words carry the biography’s emotional weight is a sound editorial decision. One reviewer describes him as “a quiet yet powerful man,” and the letters bear that out.
Chicago’s Back Streets Before Egypt
One section of the biography that tends to be underemphasized in the broader legend of Borden is his work in Chicago’s slums while training for missionary service. Taylor gives this significant attention, and rightly so. It complicates any purely romantic portrait of the young heir as purely exotic missionary. The widows, orphans, and men in the mission halls of Chicago’s back streets were Borden’s first congregation, and he gave them his time and his money with the same consistency he would later give to his preparation for China. This is the part of the book that feels most relevant to a contemporary reader asking questions about what a wealthy person owes a suffering world.
The Kansu people of China never knew him in person. He died in Egypt, having contracted cerebral meningitis during language study, before reaching them. Taylor handles this ending with the theological framing appropriate to her subject: the life completed by faithfulness rather than achievement. Whether you find that framing satisfying or heartbreaking probably depends on what you bring to it. Both responses seem legitimate, and the book doesn’t foreclose either.
Reed Smith and the Long Game of This Audiobook
At nearly eleven hours, this is a substantial listen for a biography of a man who lived only twenty-five years, which tells you how much primary-source material Taylor incorporated. Reed Smith maintains a steady, clear delivery throughout. The prose style of a 1926 missionary biography carries its own rhythms and cadences, which can feel archaic at moments, and Smith navigates that gap between the text’s era and the contemporary listener’s ear without irony or apology. He reads it as the period document it is, which is the right approach.
One thing worth noting for potential listeners: the book is dense with letters, and those passages have a different texture from Taylor’s narrative sections. Some listeners will find the epistolary material the most compelling part of the book; others may find it slows the pace. At nearly eleven hours, this is a commitment, and a listener who isn’t already drawn to the subject might find the pacing uneven. But for those who come to it with some investment in the question the book raises, what does a life well-spent look like, the length feels earned.
Why This Biography Has Stayed in Print for a Century
Borden of Yale has remained in print because it speaks to a question that recurs in every generation: what do you do when conviction and comfort pull in opposite directions? The answer Borden lived out is not one that can be universalized. But the underlying question is permanent. Several reviewers note giving the book as a gift, which tracks: this is the kind of biography that feels urgent to pass along. The audio version makes that impulse portable, and Reed Smith’s narration respects the original’s gravity without treating it as untouchable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Borden of Yale appropriate for younger listeners, given its status as a homeschool favorite?
Yes, the content is entirely appropriate for teenagers and older children. The themes of sacrifice and purpose are presented accessibly, and Borden himself is portrayed in ways that make him relatable without hagiography. The biographical narrative style is more demanding than contemporary YA, but nothing in the content poses any difficulty.
Is this a scholarly biography or more of a devotional account?
It is firmly devotional biography in the tradition of missionary biography. Mrs. Howard Taylor wrote from within the tradition she was documenting. Readers who want a more analytically distanced account would need to look elsewhere. What Taylor offers is rich primary-source material including letters, diary entries, and testimony from those who knew Borden, within a framework of Christian conviction.
Does the audiobook include the Kenneth Taylor foreword mentioned in the synopsis?
Based on the synopsis and typical production practice for this edition, yes. The foreword by Kenneth Taylor, translator of The Living Bible, is included and is worth not skipping, as it contextualizes both the book’s legacy and its personal impact on one of the twentieth century’s most influential figures in accessible Scripture translation.
At nearly eleven hours, is the pacing consistent throughout?
The pacing shifts as the book moves between narrative sections and the extensive letters Taylor quotes. The narrative portions move efficiently; the epistolary sections are denser and slower. Listeners who engage with primary-source material will find those passages the most valuable; those who prefer biography-as-story may find them occasionally heavy going. The later sections covering Borden’s work in Egypt and his final weeks are among the most compellingly written in the book.
