About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Tim Weiner
Positive The New York Times ... impassioned ... conspicuously a book of its time ... Anyone tempted to write this book off as an anti-C.I.A. screed had better look at Mr. Weiner’s sources. The author has impressively studied the archival record, teased out newly declassified primary documents and done numerous interviews to glean as much as can be publicly known about the agency’s history. Some of the most damning criticism of the C.I.A.’s past performance in this book comes not from gadflies or ideologues but from ex-officials and long-secret authorized accounts by C.I.A. historians.
Jeremi Suri
Positive The New York Times Book Review Jeremi Suri’s succinct and original volume, The Impossible Presidency, lacks the fortuitous timing of Schlesinger’s book ... Suri, a professor of history at the University of Texas, here studies a series of chief executives in a sporadically revisionist effort to trace what he considers to be the 'rise and fall of America’s highest office' ...argues that after reaching its apex with F.D.R., the presidency fell under a shadow that endures to this day because 'the continued increase in presidential power exceeded executive capacity' ... Sticking to the main theme of his book, Suri contends that the voters who had to choose a chief executive last November found the job 'too big, and ultimately too demanding'...hence decided that 'no one could master the modern presidency,' opting instead for 'a brash personality who rejected the entire history of the office, to blow it all up.'
Sean Wilentz
Positive The Washington Post For those readers eager to be introduced to Wilentz’s work, The Politicians & the Egalitarians is a good place to start. Preponderantly drawn from Wilentz’s writing for journals including the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, the book suggests the range of the author’s interests and his command of more than two centuries of American history ... Should Hillary Clinton take office next year, it is not at all impossible that we will hear the new president espousing this approach to executive power.