RaveThe Christian Science MonitorIt’s an unexpected and entirely winning biography of Gersony, who worked as a U.S. foreign policy consultant during the \'golden age\' of American diplomacy ... Kaplan’s book follows Gersony all through the rolling ambit of his world travels, and thanks to Kaplan’s own considerable narrative gifts, those journeys are as vivid and compelling as any travelogue ... Throughout it all, Gersony is surrounded not only by the indifferent waste and violent cruelty of the modern world but also, thankfully, by other good-hearted people who share what we could grandiloquently refer to as his vision of a kinder and more just society. Whether the setting is Mozambique, Chad, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, El Salvador, or Nepal, Kaplan’s writing is unfailingly vivid. The book’s moral tone is equally vivid, although far more iconoclastic when read in the harsh squinty-cynical light of the early 21st century ... reading Kaplan’s account of smart, quiet, unsung heroism, readers will come away hopeful. If Bob Gersony can spend a life going out and really listening to other people, so can we.
Tim McGrath
PositiveChristian Science Monitor... the appearance of James Monroe: A Life by Tim McGrath marks the first 700-page popular narrative reassessment of the man in quite some time ... McGrath, author of two other terrific books on early America, neatly sums up some of the key fascinations of Monroe in the long view of history ... McGrath draws a convincingly complex portrait of this first of the post-Founder presidents, a figure who more than any other in his era gave preliminary shape to both the office and the nation on the world stage. All of Monroe’s successors would live in the framework of the presidency he erected. This, too, is an ambiguous legacy – and McGrath is cautiously aware of that fact.
