RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksJeffrey Lewis’s new novel...is the gut punch everyone needs ... Reading the entirely believable language of bureaucracy unnerved me and, at points, left me physically ill ... As someone who has covered devastation, albeit natural ones such as earthquake disasters, I found Lewis’s descriptions jarringly recognizable ... His accounts also recall John Hersey’s stories in Hiroshima, and that is deliberate ... This is fiction, but it is grounded in wonky detail ... What Lewis does so well is show the geopolitical impact of human judgment and error, made by men who just happened to end up in the offices of national decision-makers ... This is a book as much about nuclear disaster as it is about the temperament of President Trump. Lewis’s commentary is unsparing on the latter ... As mercurial as President Trump is, he is also oddly predictable, and Lewis builds a believable man with his ego, irritability, and carelessness ... This book is a warning for us, in a climate where life too frequently imitates art.
