MixedThe New York Times Book Review... thoroughly researched and ably crafted ... Ritchie relates almost all of this, but he seems to excuse it or at least strain to explain it. Part of that may stem from the unusual origins of this book, which, the author forthrightly tells us, grew from a friendship between him and his wife and Pearson’s stepson and daughter-in-law. From them he got not only encouragement to tell the Old Man’s story, but also access to the unpublished portions of his diaries and other papers, including the raw materials of his unwritten memoirs and the oral histories the stepson had produced.
