PositiveThe San Francisco Chronicle...it is a credit to Karl Jacoby’s scholarly detective work that we know anything about William Henry Ellis’ amazing and improbable life ... Because Ellis was mostly successful in concealing aspects of his past, this elegantly written book is actually both less and more than the biography of a remarkable man, which also makes its title somewhat misleading. Not only are there gaps in the information about Ellis, but Jacoby often has to speculate about what happened to him or what made him tick. And although Jacoby’s inferences are entirely plausible, what we get in the end is more like a fascinating silhouette of Ellis than a fleshed-out portrait.
