RaveThe Washington PostExquisite ... What emerges is a beautiful tale about beauty. It is also a tale about grief, balancing solitude and comradeship, and finding joy in both the exalted and the mundane.
Julia Scheeres
PositiveThe Washington PostAt this point — the start of her newspaper career — the book Listen, World! is more than two-thirds finished. And that may be something of a clue as to why Robinson is not well remembered. What made her most interesting is the nervy life that came before, which Scheeres and Gilbert have ably stitched together in no small part, they acknowledge, by fact-checking Robinson’s 1934 memoir. What stands out most about Robinson’s career, though, is her astounding productivity.
Paulina Bren
PositiveThe Washington Post... [a] lively history ... The Barbizon is a story as much about 20th-century women seizing agency, in fits and starts, as it is about a hotel, and Bren tells it skillfully ... The Barbizon could boast of numerous success stories among the women who lived there. But it was also a place where ambition met reality, and Bren, a Vassar historian, ably documents that sad fact.
Roland Philipps
PositiveThe Washington Post...a new biography by Roland Philipps...piecing together a spy’s tale, relying on previously classified files released by the British security service MI5 in 2015 ... Philipps does not make the life of his unhappy antihero seem fun.
