PositiveNational ReviewWhenever my wife mentions that she is nervous about forgetting to pack something before a trip in the U.S., I tell her, \'This is America. We can buy anything we need when we get there.\' This may be true in the 21st century. In his stirring new book, This Vast Enterprise, historian Craig Fehrman explains just how untrue this was for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1803 ... In addition to giving us more detail about Sacajawea, Fehrman examines the personalities of many of the Americans on the expedition and of the Natives they encountered ... Fehrman dives deeply into the oral histories of the Native Americans to reveal their perspectives on the explorers.
PanThe Wall Street JournalFor Ms. Thompson, a historian at the University of Michigan, the Goetz case is not a nuanced tale of a scared passenger overreacting to a perceived threat. Rather, it is that of a predator who, inspired by Ronald Reagan’s America, attacked innocent youths on a train ... Fear and Fury demonstrates the unfortunate hyperpolitical approach to history being practiced in today’s academy.
RaveThe Wall Street JournalUses interviews, news accounts and even pop culture to provide readers with a strong sense of the pervasive disorder and fear in Goetz’s New York ... Mr. Williams understands that telling the story properly requires acknowledging the forgotten citizen of New York City in the 1980s—the wary pedestrian and the terrified straphanger.
William Magnuson
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalThese days, both Democrats and Republicans—goaded by the controversies surrounding high tech and by other familiar objections to corporate conduct—seem to revile corporations. For Profit shows why this is so but also, more importantly, why we should appreciate corporations more than we do.
Peter Baker
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... an illuminating biographical portrait of Mr. Baker, one that describes the arc of his career and, along the way, tells us something about how executive power is wielded in the nation’s capital ... comprehensive ... thanks in part to the authors’ dozens of meetings and hours of conversation with their subject, often has the feel of a novel related by an omniscient narrator. The book is far from hagiography, but Mr. Baker is often allowed to communicate his perspective, clearly and comprehensively—the very approach that helped him succeed so spectacularly during his long and impressive run in politics.
