RaveThe Washington Independent Review of Books... unblinking and sometimes laugh-a-minute ... What kind of screwed-up, tasteless world do we live in when a purveyor of reliably filthy trash produces an unexpectedly delightful, entertaining, dare I say knowing book? What have we come to when somebody as vulgar as Waters has his hilarious chapter on business travel, \'Delayed,\' excerpted in the Wall Street Journal? True fact ... a how-to manual for ambitious youngsters, a smutty pilgrim’s progress ... Each one is a self-contained set piece kicked off with a low-res, grainy black-and-white photo oozing bad taste ... humane and incongruously inviting.
Philip Norman
PanWashington Independent Review of Books\"And here, with Slowhand, we have a fat, beautifully designed, unexpectedly lifeless biography of Mr. Clapton, written by the esteemed Philip Norman. I want it to be magisterial. Masterful. Lordly — in keeping with the \'Clapton is God\' graffiti of 1966 London. Sadly, it isn’t. It’s mostly dreary, with a phoned-in feel — make that texted-in feel — like Mr. Norman is transcribing all his terribly detailed Clapton notes. One after the other. And some malignant spell-checker steers him off course into a cliched hell of rock-star excess ... Clapton has found himself. And Slowhand finds its own moment of perfect communion with the reader. Almost worth the price of admission.\
Stuart Stevens
PositiveThe Washington Independent Review of Books...[a] psychotically entertaining and eerily on-target new novel of U.S. presidential politics in a not-so-distant future ... The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear is not a deep meditation on who we are and where we’re going. Rich characterization? Not much. Remember — it’s the story ... Stevens’ prose is clever, spare, and sturdy, but you’ll find no magic in his words.
