RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewChilling and nuanced ... The author’s search for answers leads her into a hall of mirrors ... I will not give away where all this leads, other than to say that in nonfiction the journey can be more important than the ending. Those of us raised on detective novels, TV shows and movies want stories with a satisfying conclusion, something rare in real life. She is a fine and honest writer, a dogged reporter, and her story paints a dystopian portrait of our southern neighbor ... Corcoran is recording a tragedy far more sweeping, and perhaps familiar, than the death of Regina Martínez, which is awful enough.
Matt Young
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe trouble with writing the unvarnished truth in a memoir is that it requires you to be hard not only on others, but also on yourself. Matt Young’s inventive, unsparing, irreverent and consistently entertaining Eat the Apple is that, but it is also a useful corrective to the current idealization of the American soldier — or in this case a Marine … Young writes less about war here than about the culture of being a Marine, one of the few and the proud. His memoir — its title, Eat the Apple, refers to a vulgar Marine proverb — is in its own way a loving portrait, but it is also unsparing, ugly and outrageous … He has written a collection of arresting vignettes, roughly chronological, in a variety of forms.
Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
PositiveThe Philadelphia InquirerMore than a keepsake, this book, written by Geoffrey Ward and based on a mountain of research done by Burns, Lynn Novick, and their team, is the best single-volume history of the war. At 640 pages, it contains more information than the 10-part, 18-hour series, and with hundreds of vivid photos, maps, and illustrations, it is almost as visually compelling ...is sure to stir up old arguments, open old wounds, and spark the familiar accusations ...it is assembled from a multitude of overlapping voices, American and Vietnamese, and tells the long story from every conceivable angle, from veterans and protesters to draft-dodgers and prisoners of war to politicians and grunts ... While laboring to be evenhanded, the book clearly presents the war as most Americans have come to regard it: a tragedy, if not an international crime. This is not a strikingly new perspective.
Michael V. Hayden
PanThe New York Times[Hayden] has written an occasionally engaging book about matters — moral, legal and technological — that are very complex, but he shows little interest in examining them. Throughout he is breezy and unapologetic ... what he doesn’t do in this book is take stock of how other measures stand up in retrospect. A good example is torture. Mr. Hayden took over the C.I.A. after authorization of coercive interrogation tactics were withdrawn, but he remains a defender.
