RaveThe Washington Post... gripping, honest, raw ... Dial’s writing is clear, straightforward, stolid, the sort of judicious, even tone one often finds in adventure memoirs ... Despite the dark revelations at the end of the book, its early sections are a celebration of outdoor life ... a beautiful and tender book.
Marc Hamer
RaveThe Washington PostEach page is filled with wonder, love, regret, humility and a sense of wonder (and oneness) with nature ... it’s first a fine work of nature writing ... it teaches us to look at the natural world anew, to develop eyes for the overlooked or the unseen. The book also delivers, via its furry central character, some useful life lessons ... Read Hamer’s wondrous book, then explore your yard. You won’t quite see it the same again.
Jessica Bruder
RaveThe Washington Post...[a] devastating, revelatory book ... Despite the hardships and her meager income, May is ebullient, speaking in exclamation points. 'Hell-ooo-ooo!' is her usual greeting. An indomitable spirit, she’s the perfect choice for Bruder to follow ... Bruder writes in an evenhanded, impartial tone, avoiding polemicism. She does, however, insert herself into the narrative, sometimes intrusively ... When Bruder does stand aside, Nomadland soars. Her subjects are self-sufficient, proud people. Many in their 60s and beyond, they should be entering Shakespeare’s sixth age of man, 'into the lean and slippered pantaloon/ With spectacles on nose and pouch/ On side.' Instead they are sans homes, sans money, sans security, sans everything, except their dignity and self-reliance.
Michael Wallis
PositiveThe Washington Post...an even-handed, briskly written history of the party, destined to become the standard account of this horrid chapter of American history.
James Barron
RaveThe Washington Post...the sort of oddball, breezy read that’s perfect for a long flight or train trip ... Its current owner is the shoe designer Stuart Weitzman. Weitzman likes to collect rare things. 'It has been a record-setter time after time not because it is a stamp but because it is the only one of its kind,' Barron writes. 'What [Weitzman] wanted was the thing that no one else could have.' And that is the appeal of this unusual stamp, its mystique captured in this delightful book.
Gregor Hens
PositiveThe Washington Post...a slim but plaintive memoria to a lost love — a philosophical meditation on the nature of addiction, the listlessness, the frustration and the sense of grief one feels at the loss of a fix. Its structure is reminiscent of the memoryscapes of W.G. Sebald, including the strange, captionless photographs. This intelligent, literary volume plumbs Mark Twain, Italo Svevo and Van Morrison. But make no mistake: Nicotine isn’t a self-help book. It’s not an anti-smoking screed. Nor is it a love sonnet to tobacco. It’s an honest exposition of the emotional complexity of quitting.
