RaveThe Washington Post... an immensely valuable book ... Lozada acknowledges that he can’t cover the entire Trump-era oeuvre, but in his selections his judgment is good and his survey illuminating. He is a thoughtful, clever and engaging tour guide. He argues persuasively that the most valuable recent books on American public life move beyond outrage to probe the reasons Trump was elected and the reasons his supporters have stuck by him ... Lozada offers a brilliant, wrenching analysis of immigration ... Lozada’s treatment of identity and gender politics is especially valuable.
John Kaag
PositiveThe Washington PostConceived well before the coronavirus hijacked our lives, Sick Souls, Healthy Minds offers us a lifeline at this moment ... John Kaag invites us to ask, together with America’s greatest philosopher, William James, what makes life worth living ... James would have liked this book. Kaag ties James’s ideas directly to the challenges and puzzles of his own life ... James’s ideas have rippled through the past century more powerfully than those of any other American thinker. Kaag’s little book reminds us why.
Craig Fehrman
PositiveThe Washington PostFehrman offers a breezy, anecdote-rich account of the memoirs and autobiographies that have helped candidates running for office. He makes no attempt at comprehensiveness, and the reasoning behind his selections is elusive — and quirky. Readers learn about familiar and unfamiliar books: those written by presidents and their ghostwriters, but also others that veer away from the output of presidents, such as the Bible, almanacs, Jaws and The Da Vinci Code ... Most presidents’ books have aimed to entertain, and that might also be said of Author in Chief. But Fehrman has done his homework. His bibliographical essays are impressively thorough, particularly on works on the study of writing, publishing and reading. His readers will learn a lot about how our presidents’ books have been written, published and sold. To learn what is in them, however, they will have to follow the guidance Fehrman offers and read the books themselves.
Michael Tomasky
PositiveThe Washington Post\"... riveting ... Tomasky aims his engaging popular history at \'average concerned citizens\' rather than pundits or scholars. It is a delight to read. A responsible, accurate history (with the single exception of locating Woodrow Wilson’s birthplace in Georgia instead of Virginia), it is informed by recent historical scholarship but not weighed down by it. Tomasky also draws heavily on the best recent analyses of our current condition...\
Greg Sargent
RaveThe Washington Post\"Sargent deftly presents the evidence necessary to expose Republicans’ baseless claims of voter fraud, a threat fabricated to justify voter suppression laws, adopted in many states, that disfranchise the poor, nonwhites, recent immigrants and others likelier to vote for Democratic candidates. Sargent shows why the demography of 21st-century America, which has recently yielded aggregate majority votes for Democrats, has nevertheless worked in favor of Republicans ... An Uncivil War merits wide readership, not only because of Sargent’s persuasive indictment of the anti-democratic, countermajoritarian and cynical strategies Republicans have employed for decades, but also because of his well-reasoned arguments for continuing to play by — instead of bending — the rules.\
