RaveThe Wall Street JournalMs. Fox has produced a vivid portrait of Mandelbaum in this rich recounting of her life and times. Best-known as an obituary writer for the New York Times, Ms. Fox knows how to synthesize facts and shape a story ... Sometimes, the extraneous information threatens to swamp the Mandelbaum story, especially as there are also copious footnotes on nearly every page. But Ms. Fox is too skilled a writer to slow the momentum for long.
Barbara Weisberg
MixedThe Wall Street JournalA case from the 1860s that has all the elements of a soap opera—powerful families, a tearful confession, adultery, abortion and the fate of two innocent little girls ... The author had no access to the unfiltered voices of the main actors in this family saga, and she has struggled to bring them to life ... Has more than its share of words like \'probably,\' \'perhaps,\' \'likely\' and \'undoubtedly\' ... When...contextual passages are linked to the main narrative, they are successful. Less successful, however, are the paragraphs into which the author crams an overview of national events ... Nevertheless, Strong Passions gives us insights into a snobbish society.
Larry Loftis
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalThere is little sense of Corrie herself during these early chapters, as the archive on which Mr. Loftis relies appears to have few insights into her thoughts at this stage. Instead, the author weaves together material from many other primary and secondary sources ... As his prose begins to echo the proselytism that characterized Corrie herself, biography slides into hagiography. Yet Corrie ten Boom’s indomitable faith in the face of evil was extraordinary, and The Watchmaker’s Daughter recounts a story that deserves to be remembered.
Julia Scheeres
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... lively ... We learn little about her newspaper work—her scathing, witty denunciations of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism and capital punishment—because we are three-quarters of the way through the book before she, at age 35, lands her first newspaper gig...There are two good reasons for this imbalance. The first is that there is compelling primary material on the first half of Robinson’s life....The second reason, I suspect, is that Robinson has given us such an enthralling account of her fight for independence that it would be a shame to dilute it. There are graceful passages giving context and describing settings, but for the most part the authors rely on Robinson’s voice for the narrative ... There is no punchy memoir in Robinson’s voice for the second half of her life, only glimpses of the woman who urged readers to seize their lives with both hands and conquer their fears. The lack of other voices in this biography means that, when present, Robinson controls the story. Once locked behind her professional persona, she becomes more impenetrable ... Yet Ms. Scheeres and Ms. Gilbert have made an important contribution to women’s history. Their intent is clear.
Susan L. Carruthers
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalThe armed forces’ distrust of romantic relationships—and the apparent misogyny that underlies this view—ripples throughout Ms. Carruthers’s prose ... Ms. Carruthers is careful to acknowledge that couples are not hermetically sealed from the larger social shifts of the past century, including changes in women’s status, marital expectations and the conduct of warfare ... Ms. Carruthers makes a convincing case that \'the Dear John letter has helped make women, not war, the culprit for love’s breakdown under pressure. It’s time other stories—and other voices—were heard.\'
Laura Thompson
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalThe most recent heiresses in this selective catalog refused the default female position of passive victim that characterized earlier incarnations ... Alongside all the gossip, Ms. Thompson found a few enlightened heiresses, such as Angela Burdett-Coutts, who in the late 19th century made good philanthropic use of her millions. But heiresses such as these are not so fun to read about. They certainly don’t give us the same delicious shiver of schadenfreude.
Kim Todd
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalSensational encompasses the intersection of newspaper wars, the campaign for women’s rights and the growing concern over the exploitation of labor. Ms. Todd interweaves these themes into her close focus on newspaper archives. Rather than emphasize one woman at a time, however, she takes a chronological approach—not entirely successfully, making it difficult to keep the stunt reporters apart as they don their disguises and dive into squalor ... Ms. Todd’s resurrection of these courageous reporters is fascinating because the women and their stories are so vibrant. With acerbic wit, the author also makes a larger point. In the 1960s, Tom Wolfe challenged established journalistic conventions when he told his stories in scenes, with ample dialogue, colorful details and a distinct point of view. George Plimpton trained with the Detroit Lions. Hunter S. Thompson hung out with the Hells Angels. At colleges across the country, MFA programs began offering degrees in \'creative nonfiction.\' But it was the male muckrakers who are credited as the progenitors of gritty, detailed narratives told in the first person. Ms. Todd makes a good case that more credit is due to those early \'girl stunt reporters.\'
Paul Starobin
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Starobin’s story is the typical Gilded Age plot of a political boss and a robber baron jointly pulling the strings of various politicians hungry for their financial support ... Into this narrative Mr. Starobin skillfully weaves the political evolution of Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867, and the insidious rise of nativism at the turn of the century ... In his lively account of the Nome conspiracy, Mr. Starobin takes satisfaction in the outcome: Even during the Gilded Age’s rampant capitalism, the American justice system prevented McKenzie from looting Alaska.
Michael Ondaatje
RaveThe Globe and MailThe world that Ondaatje has created is intensely mid-century English, abundant with details of old-fashioned arts such as thatching and beekeeping, and arcane details about greyhound racing and college roof climbing. Scenes depicted in the earlier pages are drenched in the shadowed lighting and elliptical dialogue of classic black-and-white British films such as Brief Encounter or The Third Man ... Every sentence that Ondaatje writes defies gravity with its elegance, yet is weighty with significance ... underneath the uncertainty there is a sturdy cohesion that makes this one of Ondaatje’s most successful and satisfying novels.
