RaveThe Wall Street Journal... superb ... Mr. Plokhy’s endnotes frequently cite Russian and Ukrainian sources: declassified KGB documents, memoirs of retired Soviet apparatchiks, studies by Russian scholars, much of it new to English readers. The range of such references conveys the scope of the author’s research and explains how he could add so much to the documentary record of a subject covered so voluminously. Nuclear Folly is an immense scholarly achievement, engrossing and terrifying, surely one of the most important books ever written about the Cuban Missile Crisis and 20th-century international relations ... The central conclusion here—that the U.S. and U.S.S.R., hobbled by poor information, made decisions in the dark—is amply illustrated, if not new. Other arguments appear less persuasive.
Jack Goldsmith
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... a reckoning, as Mr. Goldsmith confronts his disloyalty toward his adoptive father, and also a meticulous reconstruction of \'the greatest mystery in American history\' ... Unlike other researchers, he had unfettered access to Mr. O’Brien and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews ... contains a few minor errors—e.g., the 1972 Watergate break-in occurred at the office complex, not the hotel. But these deficiencies scarcely detract from what is otherwise a monumental achievement ... A few years ago, the Justice Department agreed to provide Mr. O’Brien with a letter of absolution, only to renege at the last minute. In Hoffa’s Shadow makes a fitting substitute.
Kate Andersen Brower
MixedThe Wall Street Journal[An] intimate, compulsively readable account of the dynamics that have shaped—and sometimes destroyed—relations at the top of the American political hierarchy ... Though Ms. Brower’s source notes make it difficult to tell which details are previously undisclosed, some seem newsy ... Alas, numerous problems plague the prose in First in Line, the most serious of which is narrative incoherence ... [Andersen presents] history as caricature. And the clichés proliferate.
