RaveThe Los Angeles TimesWitt has meticulously uncovered and documented the lost history of one of the United States’ most efficient charitable funds. With incredible detail, he has reconstructed the ways a modest fund endowed by a reluctant heir managed to reshape American civil rights in less than 20 years ... Witt dives deep into this social setting, revealing not only big-picture moments and movements but also the people and legal decisions that created the environment for this crisis of American life ... Witt has written a book that is at its most nuanced when he’s laying out the details of trials and case law, as well as their roots and impact. But not only does he measure the influence of the fund, which dissolved in 1941, he also documents the directors who advocated for various causes and the arguments that went into major funding decision.
RaveThe Los Angeles TimesThe novel is propulsive because [of] Lola ... She is psychologically complex, straddling both beautiful sincerity and utter vapidity ... [Chang\'s] prose is infectiously funny, and her ability to satirize rich people paying silly amounts of money to be led to their souls has only sharpened.
RaveThe Los Angeles TimesThere are new things here. The journey into hell has been done, but it hasn’t been done quite the way R. F. Kuang does it ... We’re once again treated to the power of Kuang’s mind. It takes a smart person to write geniuses, and Alice and Peter are brilliant, if blinkered ... A more mature and less showy novel than Kuang’s earlier work ... Hell filtered through a scholar’s eyes.
PositiveThe Los Angeles TimesThe book is gripping, but it doesn’t quite deliver on its subtitled promise to \'win the Cold War with forbidden literature.\' The story English has researched and put together focuses almost entirely on Poland’s fight for freedom from the USSR ... What this book does incredibly well is document an oral history of Polish resistance that has, until now, only been told in bits and pieces ... This literary history is a prescient one.
RaveThe Los Angeles TimesMacfarlane’s touch is deft, giving us exactly enough to consider the question while also showing us how this is not just about rivers but about us ... Macfarlane’s writing is as beautiful as the rivers and the hope he’s describing.
Rachel Kousser
RaveThe Los Angeles TimesA breath of fresh air ... Kousser’s biography extends beyond Alexander’s military movements and into his emotional life ... Her account is exhaustively researched — many chapters extend past 100 footnotes — but remains approachable.
