RaveThe Washington Post...remarkable and groundbreaking ... Fall and Rise is an ambitious undertaking, setting out to be an exhaustive, prismatic chronicle of 9/11. Impressively, Zuckoff pulls it off. He deftly employs novelistic tools to create and maintain suspense (a difficult feat when the story’s outcome is universally known): foreshadowing, cliffhangers, and an evocative homing in on details both heartbreaking and macabre ... Fall and Rise evokes David McCullough’s The Johnstown Flood and, before that, the work of Walter Lord, whose style was described by one reviewer as \'a kind of literary pointillism, the arrangement of contrasting bits of fact and emotion in such a fashion that a vividly real impression of an event is conveyed to the reader\' ... Fall and Rise comes alive, reconfiguring and preserving the memories of that day in a vital and unforgettable account.
Patricia Miller
PositiveThe Washington Post\"... tantalizing and beautifully researched ... Miller spends a significant amount of time providing historical and societal context, relaying fascinating anecdotes that illuminate the evolution of the sexual double standard and the difficulty of Pollard’s endeavor ... A diverse and intriguing cast of characters rounds out Pollard’s saga, and Miller does an admirable job bringing them to vivid life ... Miller deftly sorts through [the he-said-she-said allegations], but one wishes she had re-created the more cinematic events as they happened, giving the narrative a Rashomon-like quality that highlighted the drama while examining the often subjective nature of truth.\
Peter Manseau
RaveThe Wall Street JournalMumler’s notoriety, and the growing suspicions of his detractors, is the scaffolding of Mr. Manseau’s entertaining and ambitious narrative, but several supporting characters add heft and context, elevating The Apparitionists from an engaging biography of a huckster to a portrait of America during arguably its most formative years ... Mr. Manseau develops these threads so that The Apparitionists itself is like a photograph—each successive chapter adding depth and shade and specks of mystery, until the final result magically appears, provoking as many questions as it provides answers.
Ben Blum
RaveThe Washington Post\"The book offers no shocking, whispered confession (a la The Jinx) nor a heartfelt attempt at exoneration (Making a Murderer). Instead, it is a riveting exploration of the malleability of memory and the stories we choose to tell — to others and to ourselves … As Blum delves deeper into the mystery, math and logic remain his secret weapons. Despite his growing affection for his cousin, he is able to acknowledge that some of Alex’s statements do not add up … Blum is as gifted with language as he is with numbers, and Ranger Games is an extraordinary book, a thrilling, bumpy journey into the complexities of the mind, with its capacity to protect and betray — often within the very same moment.\
