RaveThe Wall Street JournalFinely sifted ... He includes abundant historical and social context. He collates different versions of important events carefully and is frank about the limits of his evidence. Not a Plato specialist himself, he generously cites the literature, tracking shifts in opinion about the Republic and its author. Sometimes, however, his narrative bogs down in the shuttling among Sicily, Athens and the text of the Republic, only to be prodded along with portentous phrases such as \'but soon, a new crisis made him a hero again\' and \'but fate had a strange resolution in store for him yet.\'
Still, Mr. Romm’s portrait of Plato as a scheming, often bumbling political player will be intriguingly new to most readers.
Richard Powers
MixedThe Wall Street JournalPowers’s evocations of the creatures in the deep, alas, don’t always dazzle with novelty ... All this is an appealingly romantic vision, but ultimately a limited one.
Andrew O'Hagan
MixedThe Wall Street JournalThe range of phenomena Mr. O’Hagan documents is truly impressive. Campbell’s slow crackup provides a narrative string for all these vivid beads. But that string is awfully slack, with a soap-operatic sense of perpetually deferred payoff ... This would be less noticeable if the prose had the verve of Mr. O’Hagan’s best ... The third-person narration of Caledonian Road, by contrast, feels caught at an awkward middle distance, often wanly functional or summary.
Sara B Franklin
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalEngaging ... The Editor shows how much she did, and how much all good editors do, on and off the page ... Makes an excellent case for Jones’s importance.
Ross Perlin
RaveThe Wall Street JournalSuperb ... Mr. Perlin can set a scene with quick, sure strokes ... Wonderfully rich, Language City is in part an introduction to the diverse ways different languages work.
Adam Nicolson
RaveThe Wall Street JournalAssigning such importance to place is a characteristic move for Mr. Nicolson, an elegant and erudite British writer ... He has set himself a difficult task ... Winning enthusiasm ... Teaches many lessons, but most of all that we should savor the strange and stimulating legacy of this lesser-known era.
Ben Goldfarb
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalLively ... Mr. Goldfarb goes into the field with a number of practitioners, whom he captures in wry strokes punctuated by excellent quotations ... Perceptive ... Well-paced and vivid, an engaging account of a potentially dull subject, but it is sprinkled with strained flourishes ... Sensible.
John Szwed
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalHighly enjoyable ... An impressively full portrait of an erratic subject, even if the text can feel slightly unpruned.
