RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksThe great strength of The Club is that it renders these personages from another century so vividly that we feel we once knew them ourselves. Damrosch accomplishes this by incorporating into his text chapters of masterful biography—familiar territory for 18th-century scholars, who get to meet old friends brought to life as rarely before. For those who don’t know the era and its people well, The Club offers a wonderfully painless way of getting to know them ... While Damrosch is not reluctant to provide facts regarding his subjects’ public lives and projects, what matters more to him is presenting them as \'the genuine progeny of common humanity,\' Johnson’s celebrated words of praise for the characters of Shakespeare ... Thankfully, the fact that women were not allowed in the Literary Club hasn’t stopped Damrosch from writing about them with the sensitivity they deserve ... Damrosch brings all these people, men and women alike, to vivid life. After finally closing the book, I found that I missed them.
