MixedThe Financial TimesHad he not been married to one of America’s great historians for 42 years, it is doubtful Dick Goodwin would warrant a book of his own ... The result is a book that reads like biography but is replete with the myopia and defensiveness of memoir ... It is not without its keenly observed revelations ... But these vignettes are intermittent, making the rest of the book feel small and unbefitting of one of America’s greatest historians, who inserts herself into the narrative in occasionally jarring ways.
Philip Rucker
PositiveFinancial Times (UK)A Very Stable Genius...churns over the same ground of many volumes that came before. In fairness to Rucker and Leonnig, whose coverage of Trump has won them both Pulitzers, the reason much of their book feels recycled is because of their own standard-setting work on the Trump beat ... Even so, because so much of what is shocking about Trump is done out in the open, the authors are forced to spend an unfortunate number of pages recounting events we all watched, stupefied, as they unfurled live on cable TV ... And yet A Very Stable Genius remains a page-turner even for those who chronicle Trump for a living. As with previous books on Trumpworld, it is the cumulative effect of what has happened in the Trump presidency, the reminder of outrage piled on outrage that shocks the conscience ... On that count, Rucker and Leonnig have done us all a service.
