RaveThe Washington PostJason Zinoman, in his definitive and enjoyable biography, demystifies the host ... Zinoman walks the line between reportage and criticism, and shifts between historian, clinician and fan boy without grinding the clutch too much. His studious research is spiced by an enduring appreciation of Letterman’s work and salted by the cataloguing of the host’s less-savory traits and behavior ... Zinoman’s great achievement is rendering Letterman as utterly human, even subhuman at times, and charting his show as an irregular comic pilgrimage — if not toward comic excellence than at least toward comic insolence.
Alec Baldwin
MixedThe Washington PostIf Baldwin’s Nevertheless had a subtitle, it would be 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Defeated Egotist' ... What’s consistent is Baldwin’s dissatisfaction with himself and his life. Nevertheless is a blunt object wielded by a man of sharp intellect against his own soul ... It’s refreshing to read a celebrity memoir that is not painted in pastels and glossed with self-actualization, that does not ride off into the sunset after rewarding projects and hurdled obstacles. Nevertheless, because of Baldwin’s aimlessness, is many things: the confession of an Irish Catholic hothead, an appreciation of film and theater by a sincere aesthete, and a 265-page therapy session — wherein the reader becomes an armchair psychoanalyst unable to treat his patient ... That Baldwin is both enraptured and besieged by his own celebrity is what makes him fascinating and combustible; the book itself is only occasionally so. Instead, it is elegant and petty, sometimes on the same page ... By its last third, Nevertheless is checking boxes instead of leaping from and around them — which is a shame, because Baldwin is a fierce wit and proven raconteur.
