MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewEd Caesar, the author of a fine book on the quest to run a two-hour marathon, has long been captivated by Wilson, and in The Moth and the Mountain, he writes beautifully about the attractions and problems of researching his life ... A historian might try to construct a biography of such a figure through a deep analysis of the surrounding culture — using it to inform speculation on the hero’s worldview ... But Caesar — bred in the fact-checking tradition of The New Yorker, where he is a staff writer — will not be drawn into speculation. He insists that we cannot know what Wilson really believed, and that much of what Wilson says about his spiritual conversion may be untrue ... Caesar is a fine writer, but he has not managed to find the art to resurrect a man whose final act is so bereft of context or explanation.
