MixedThe Guardian (UK)It’s not a likely story, but Eilenberger tells it with free-wheeling gusto ... Eilenberger appeals to what he calls \'the spirit of the 1920s\', which according to him involved bewilderment at the elusiveness of time, anxiety about the dehumanising effects of science, and amazement at \'the birth of an age of global communication\'. He must be aware, however, that there is scarcely a decade in the last 500 years that could not be described in the same way. He is therefore reduced to tying his magicians together by means of biographical chatter. He cuts rapidly from one life to another, never shying away from sexual speculation, and summarises his results in breezy chapter headings ... The word \'meanwhile\' is worked so hard that it dies of exhaustion half way through.
Norman Lebrecht
MixedThe Guardian (UK)... an exercise in boosterism ... while Genius and Anxiety presents itself as a work of serious historical research, it is also laced with journalistic pizzazz. I have to confess however that for me it doesn’t always work. I soon tired of the relentless use of the present tense, his sexual knowingness, and his habit of including himself, Zelig like, in every chapter ... As a historian, Lebrecht is often reliable, but not always ... is gushing about Jewish genius, but about Jewish anxiety it is rather coy. I was astonished when I got to the end of the book and realised that it hardly mentions the Holocaust ... Lebrecht’s determination to present Jews as bold creators rather than victims of Nazi policy is liberating in some ways, but it is disabling as well. Jewish experience in the 20th century was shaped not just by the millions who were killed, but also by those who survived, at least for a while, and suffered in other ways.
Anthony Gottlieb
PositiveThe GuardianHe [Anthony Gottlieb] is on a mission to show that the great dead philosophers have been misunderstood and that they deserve to be taken seriously ... The Dream of Reason is now joined by this much-anticipated sequel, which picks up the story with Descartes and carries it forward to the beginnings of the French Revolution ...rejects the view of Descartes as a 'rationalist' who refused to acknowledge the significance of the empirical sciences: he was, on the contrary, a bold advocate of the principle that physical phenomena are generated by the mechanical interactions of tiny particles ... Dozens of other myths get their comeuppance in this well-written and fast-moving book ...Gottlieb risks undermining his defence of the great philosophers by depicting them as incorrigible fantasists, lost in their dreams of reason and enlightenment.