MixedThe Washington Free BeaconNo fully satisfying explanation for contemporary leftist anti-Zionism emerges from The Lions\' Den, except perhaps in the book\'s demonstration that the left never supported Israel. Not really, not down in its bones ... Susie Linfield looks...for ways to remain a leftist while being generally pro-Israel—and, presumably, a leftist while not falling into the anti-Semitism that follows all too often from criticism of Israel. It\'s a dream and a delusion, a false light leading only deeper into the swamp, readers will conclude as they reach the end of The Lion\'s Den.
Lone Frank
PositiveThe Washington Free BeaconAs she proceeds in her narrative...Frank proves nuanced and thoughtful about the sorts of cultural changes that have left Heath as the villain in a morality tale, where he is remembered at all ... Frank's account of recent work in deep brain stimulation has more than a little of the rah-rah about it—the same enthusiasm for the latest psychiatric trends that led Michael Crichton to write about Heath's primitive style of electric manipulation back in 1972. What Frank undeniably does get, however, is the difficulty of judging one age by the standards of another and the hard work necessary to balance the moral demands of one good against the moral demands of another. The Pleasure Shock is, for the most part, an adult book—taking a grown-up look at science in both its progressions and regressions.
Thomas Pynchon
MixedThe Wall Street JournalDoc is so stoned most of the time that it is amazing that he manages to keep anything straight. But somehow, out of all the confusing threads, the detective’s investigation begins to weave something interesting in the last quarter of the book. It’s a pretty strange bit of fabric Mr. Pynchon ends up with—a kind of paranoid blanket, embroidered with conspiracy theories—but it manages to cover the mystery elements and put the story to bed in reasonable shape … Take it to beach, if you like, and spend an afternoon reading it. Inherent Vice will do as well, I suppose, as any of a half-dozen other volumes on the summer fiction best-seller list. But isn’t that a sad, diminished way to describe a Thomas Pynchon novel?
