MixedThe New YorkerLewis, in her discussion of race and I.Q., acknowledges that measurable biological differences among groups need not be permanent...but she does not delve into the impermanence of our social definitions of race, or the imprecision of using race as a measure of genetic similarity ... If Lewis doesn’t quite exert herself to demolish the idea that geniuses come from a genetically superior social class, she is more diligent about tearing down the idea that geniuses operate outside of society ... Lewis falls victim to a kind of inverse hagiography—an Annoying Man theory of history—in which she fixates on the individual defects of supposed geniuses rather than on larger trends provoked by the ideology of genius.
PositiveThe New YorkerThrilling and comprehensive ... MacCulloch is particularly engaging in his discussion of how baffling the early Christian mortification of the flesh would have seemed to contemporaries.
Darryl Pinckney
PositiveLiberFor those of us with a toadying and effete interest in midcentury intellectual life, the book is worth reading for the gossip alone ... The ensemble is large, the details extraneous and sometimes indulgent ... It is touching to watch an unusually wise and egoless writer reproduce his anxious adoration toward someone who never stopped being mythic, even when she disappointed him ... He writes to honor the people who made his writing life possible.
