PanThe Atlantic... a book that is wall-to-wall opinions ... It’s not news that our degraded politics has made truth elusive. Yet even seasoned Trump haters may be surprised at how elusive it has become for Don Jr.
Fergus M. Bordewich
MixedThe Atlantic... provocative ... Bordewich’s ungainly subtitle telegraphs the grand claims he sets out to make for a group of congressmen who mostly styled themselves as Radical Republicans ... A popular historian and journalist blessedly free of academic affiliations, Bordewich is a master of the character sketch, summarizing complicated figures in a few swift phrases. But Lincoln himself never comes alive in his pages. Indeed, he scarcely appears. He lurks just offstage, stepping forward now and then to try, briefly and usually without success, to stymie the righteous zeal that propels the Radicals ... If bordewich oversells the legacy of the Radicals in Congress, his more fundamental misapprehension lies elsewhere: His version of events shortchanges the greatness that humanists of all stripes—not only historians—have found in Lincoln. The problem is partly a failure to appreciate that the Radicals were kibitzers, as many legislators are. But misjudging Lincoln’s role as executive and his commitment to larger obligations is Bordewich’s more telling mistake.
Susan Page
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... sturdy and fair-minded ... Readers of The Matriarch will find a person worth knowing in her own right, a shrewd witness to grand events who was full of incongruities: generous and fiercely protective, sharp-tongued and kindly, capable of great warmth and utterly lacking in sentimentality ... Tender and armor-plated: It is one of her many virtues as a biographer that Ms. Page lets such complications stand without trying to explain them away ... The Matriarch will be read, and worth reading, for a long time to come.
