MixedLiterary Review (UK)Pennock is good on the particularities... which she describes pithily and sympathetically. When it comes to the general, however, she is all over the place. Her estimates of the numbers of indigenous Americans in Europe are understandably vague, given the patchiness of records. But they are also consistently inconsistent ... If Pennock had trimmed her ambitions to the shortcomings of the sources, this would scarcely matter. Yet for some reason, they lead her to double down ... That reason may lie in the sense of mission that infuses this book. Pennock seems to have conceived of her work not merely as an act of recovery but as one of reparation too.
Tom Gallagher
PositiveLiterary Review (UK)What is a fascist? ... The question lies at the heart of Tom Gallagher’s new life of António Salazar, leader of Portugal from 1932 to 1968 ... Gallagher believes that Salazar has been unfairly categorised. He may have been a despot, but his despotism was more in the mould of Frederick the Great’s than Franco’s or Hitler’s. Gallagher marshals a good deal of evidence – some of it aesthetic – to support his argument ...In his introduction, Gallagher admits that he has written this book without consulting Salazar’s personal papers. At times it shows ... If nothing else, Gallagher has demonstrated how injudicious labelling can conceal the essence of things.
