Book Review: If—: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years by Christopher Benfey

Explore Rudyard Kipling’s Life and Journey in the U.S.A.

If this enticing, bestselling book doesn’t quite live up to its excellent introduction, and it doesn’t, it is not for lack of effort. Author Christopher Benfey is astute and intelligent about key parts of Rudyard Kipling’s life, including his years in America. I learned more about Kipling, America and literature than I knew before reading If—: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years.

If—’s title misleads. It’s more like a series of biographical sketches and portraits of Kipling—largely here in the U.S., also in Japan and London—than an accounting of the soulful poem. Readers who know the poem, and every reader should, will probably learn more about it. Did you know, for instance, that If— was created to animate a founding father?

“It might surprise the poem’s many admirers that Kipling originally used this plea for stalwart, levelheaded leadership to illustrate a story about George Washington, thus giving it an American setting,” Benfey writes. And If— certainly fits George Washing…