PanThe New York Times Book ReviewCooper restores the texture of Liberia to Johnson Sirleaf’s life story, making this a propulsive biography, but it ultimately feels subservient to its subject — valorizing Johnson Sirleaf rather than complicating her ... in her study of leadership, Cooper takes a deeply American approach. Here, politics is all protagonist, and history is largely a series of plot points. Our hero forges her character in the fires of dictatorship and war. The narrative is a linear march, with little time for distractions ... Cooper seems to take Johnson Sirleaf’s point of view as a structural blueprint, supplementing the president’s memoir with interviews she conducted with her ... one wishes that Johnson Sirleaf’s biographer would reckon directly with the president’s responsibility for her more expedient choices, rather than depicting her as a victim of circumstance ... Such a story may be moving, but it’s also a myth.
