PanThe New York Review of Books... almost five hundred pages of bumptious recitation, fatuous braggadocio, and lame attempts at wit ... It’s hard to be cool when you’re John Bolton, and evidently almost as hard not to be outright offensive. This emerges in his painfully maladroit efforts to lend color to a turgid narrative preoccupied with self-flattery and score-settling ... Bolton also has an unfortunate penchant for defensive self-justification ... Even more trying are his sour, stilted witticisms, some of which he feels compelled to point out are supposed to be funny ... He’s (a little) funnier when he caricatures himself by casually playing the curmudgeon ... If Bolton has shown a dash of rectitude, he has also revealed a surfeit of blinding egomania.
