MixedThe Wall Street Journal... provocative, compulsively readable ... Mr. Burlingame’s astoundingly exhaustive research intertwines contemporary observations with sources dating well into the 20th century (Mary died in 1882), though at least some of the latter must have been influenced by the remorseless newspaper coverage of the widowed First Lady. In the endnotes—unfortunately available only via a website supplied by the University of Illinois-Springfield—Mr. Burlingame is forthright about the nature of many memory-based sources ... Other sources seem even flimsier; the word \'evidently\' is, fittingly, a favored qualifier in the narrative.
