MixedThe Washington PostHandsome ... His cast is various, their inclusion in a collection like this helped very much by their learning and erudition. Graff’s success is in marshaling, corralling. But this is an oral history, and oral history is a lush place to hide ... Graff crouches behind his sources ... There is a perversity in praising the scientific-industrial achievement of the project without a fuller reckoning with the ensuing shadowed age it helped to create ... Graff does well to paint the voyages made by several of the Manhattan Project’s leading minds to the refuge of America ... In its lapses, Graff’s book, perhaps unconsciously, helps this dangerous temptation persist — along with the myth that the bombings were inevitable or unavoidable.
Brian Merchant
MixedThe New RepublicA blend of pacy narrative history and contemporary reportage, Blood in the Machine sees a fresh relevance in the struggles of these misunderstood rebels ... Occasionally, though, Merchant’s chatty pop-sci style becomes distracting ... Merchant hunts optimistically through the culture for evidence Luddism is on the comeback—and keeps being disappointed.
Christopher Clark
RaveThe New RepublicAuthoritative ... Revolutionary Spring rescues that crucial moment when possibility was cracked open; Clark also looks unflinchingly at the methods used to weld that crack shut ... It’s difficult not to be roused by Clark’s stylish narrative of this intoxicating opening phase.
