RaveThe Times (UK)Dina Kraft, who worked with her on the book, is to be thanked, along with Hannah’s family, for ensuring that this memoir exists at all. Pick-Goslar worked incredibly hard at Holocaust education, but it would have been a loss if there were no book to capture the tale. And Kraft should also be thanked for making a good job of it. She has clearly relied on documentary evidence as well as Pick-Goslar’s recall, but she does so in a way that strengthens the book without losing Pick-Goslar’s voice. The facts and the personal memories are integrated well. The book is readable and moving.
John Kay
MixedThe Times (UK)... a clear book, and it lands its argument that assuming the future could be predicted with great accuracy using known data was foolish. Certainly, the impact of the over-reliance by the financial services industry on dodgy numbers has been felt by all of us ... But it could reasonably be objected that it lands its argument more than once. It doesn’t require 444 pages plus endnotes to make the point that lots of numerical models are poorly specified and don’t account sufficiently for things we don’t know. It could have been said at half the length ... The book is well written, though, and is often entertaining. It is just that it goes on entertaining for quite a while. It can be read by the general reader, but I think its core audience is people who calculate financial risk. It’s not so much that the lay reader wouldn’t understand it, but more that it spends a lot of time attacking an error — the false precision of numbers and forecasting — that most people don’t encounter a great deal.
Charles Moore
RaveThe Times (UK)The account is riveting in its detail, with Moore finding new sources—diaries, contemporary notes—to bring fresh life and facts to the story. It astonishes, for instance, that her chief whip, Tim Renton, did not vote for her ... Moore’s Margaret Thatcher is one of the truly great biographies. Throughout the three volumes it has been comprehensive and subtle, breaking new ground while being surefooted on familiar terrain. He provides a portrait of Thatcher—her anxiousness and her certainty, her strength and her frailty—that is surprising and fresh while still convincing. This volume completes a historical masterpiece.
Malcolm Gladwell
RaveThe Times (UK)There is a reason why Gladwell is a rock star of nonfiction. This is a dazzling book. Stories are well selected and brilliantly told, ideas are slowly revealed until the reader arrives at a conclusion they didn’t expect. Gladwell is advancing ideas and, sure, they are all open to challenge. Is Levine right about TDT? Are the theories of crime prevention correct? But they are stimulating and convincing — and you won’t regret a minute you spend mastering them.
