RaveThe Los Angeles TimesThrough his reporting, writing and brilliant personal digressions, Packer delivers a pitch-perfect portrait of Holbrooke the diplomat ... So, too, Packer captures Holbrooke’s personal failings as a husband and in his treatment of friends and rivals. Packer’s asides about Holbrooke’s brilliance are overwhelmed by the lengthy descriptions of the flaws and weaknesses that defined his professional and personal lives ... But by the end of the book and of Holbrooke’s life, the reader almost understands why, despite the diplomat’s obvious shortcomings, thousands of mourners, including Presidents Obama and Clinton and scores of ambassadors and CEOs felt compelled to attend memorial services in Washington or New York for a man who never attained a Cabinet position. What is harder to accept are the assumptions implied in the book’s title, Our Man, and its assertion that Holbrooke’s life and death symbolize \'the end of the American Century\' ... everything about the book makes clear that Holbrooke, unlike most of us, was so much larger than life that his brilliance, his ambition and his blind spots were singular in nature.
