About Book Marks
James Ledbetter
Recent Reviews
Tricia Romano
Positive Book Post Sometimes history is written to make events seem inevitable, but as Romano’s book powerfully conveys, the Voice was always a real-time argument—occasionally violent—about what the Voice was and should be ... It’s understandable that an oral history devotes attention to longstanding feuds, but there is a nuance that is hard for any one person’s testimony to capture : How does a media enterprise so riven with political and cultural conflict not merely survive but thrive?
Michael Lewis
Mixed The Washington Post Seductive ... Leaves the reader wanting to know more ... At moments Lewis seems so willing to let Bankman-Fried off the hook, even after Bankman-Fried was charged with fraud and money-laundering, for which he is on trial this week ... [A] vivid portrayal ... Lewis seems so deeply enmeshed in Bankman-Fried’s corner ... A more nuanced breakdown about what went wrong...would have bolstered Lewis’s book, which ends up focusing mostly on Bankman-Fried’s story and personality, and lacks some of the finer-grained financial analysis of Lewis’s previous books.
David A. Nichols
Positive The Washington Post There are times when Nichols’s pistols don’t quite smoke; we read of officials who are 'probably' or 'perhaps' acting with a particular motive, and of people who are presumed but not proved to be acting on the president’s behalf. This isn’t Nichols’s fault as much as a limit of the historical record; still, such phrases occasionally cause the reader’s eyebrows to raise. Nonetheless Nichols has provided a gripping, detailed account of how the executive branch subtly but decisively defeated one of America’s most dangerous demagogues.
Duncan Clark
Positive The New York Times Book Review The access [Clark] got to the company pushes his breezy account more toward the business than to Ma’s personality. Still, Ma emerges as an unpretentious, self-deprecating leader, fond of quoting martial arts novels and Forrest Gump.”