PositiveThe Washington PostPlokhy...provides fresh and horrifying details ... If there is one flaw in this deeply researched book, it is that Plokhy does not emphasize how reckless Kennedy was not only in ordering the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion but also in continuing poorly concealed efforts to overthrow or kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro ... Finishing this sobering account, I could not help but think of the dangers that exist today from nuclear standoffs involving Pakistan, India, China, North Korea and the United States.
Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
PanThe New York Times Book ReviewThat is a lot of credit to give to a treaty that, until now, pretty universally has been dismissed as inconsequential. Hathaway and Shapiro deserve medals of intellectual valor for even daring to make a case that is so at odds with what almost every other expert in the field of international relations believes. But, sadly, their thesis, while backed up by many erudite, carefully footnoted pages, is not persuasive. 'There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them,' George Orwell wrote. The notion that the Kellogg-Briand Pact was a raging success is one of them ... In short, by the end of The Internationalists, Hathaway and Shapiro are forced to acknowledge that the Kellogg-Briand Pact was not nearly as important as they claimed in the beginning.
William Taubman
RaveThe Wall Street Journal[Taubman] delivers a meticulously researched, clear-eyed volume that will undoubtedly stand for years as the definitive account of the Soviet Union’s last ruler. His biography is not a thing of literary beauty, but it is reliable and judicious, admiring but never hagiographical ... Mr. Taubman is persuasive in calling him 'a tragic hero who deserves our understanding and admiration,' even if it is a judgment that few of his countrymen share.
Ben Macintyre
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThis is hardly the first time the S.A.S. story has been told but Rogue Heroes is the best and most complete version of the tale ... [a] highly enjoyable and entertaining narrative.
Lawrence Wright
RaveThe Wall Street JournalIn describing these disparate episodes, Mr. Wright is not pursuing any larger agenda. There are no policy prescriptions. This is reportage pure and simple—and it is first-rate ... He recounts his findings in crystalline prose unadorned with fancy word tricks. He has a deceptively simple, folksy way of writing that appears natural but can be achieved only with painstaking effort.
Randall B. Woods
MixedThe Wall Street JournalWhile Mr. Woods does an excellent job of describing the passage of Great Society programs, he is less successful in grappling with their consequences. Despite the equivocal title of this book, he writes as an unabashed booster that 'the Great Society was an unquestioned success.' He is on his strongest ground in claiming that 'the Great Society’s efforts to defeat Jim Crow in the South were largely successful.'
Alistair Horne
PanThe New York Times Book ReviewThere is nothing wrong with building a book around accounts of multiple, unrelated battles...The trick is to provide some kind of organizing principle to justify the choice of topics and to spin out an interesting thesis from the historical raw materials. Horne fails on both counts.
