Piquant and resonant ... Without sufficient evidence, [Shapiro's] assertion comes across as overreach ... The Playbook, though, is nonetheless an engrossing read... and the present-day echoes of Dies’s culture-warring are unambiguous.
Shapiro’s book is meticulous and highly researched, albeit in no way apolitical ... The goodies and the baddies are clearly delineated: what the FTP strove to do, however imperfectly, was ultimately a Good Thing, and Dies and his cronies killed more than they knew by shutting it down.
Compelling ... Shapiro skillfully reveals the fundamentally theatrical nature of political hearings, with good and bad actors, and participants eager to derail the initiative without a clear understanding of creativity and theatrical production.
The search for parallels puts a presentist filter over the story of the FTP that is ultimately the book's undoing ... It’s particularly odd for a Shakespeare scholar of Shapiro’s immense gifts and knowledge to assert that democracy and theater go hand in hand ... In reducing the Federal Theatre Project’s story to a parable for the present day, The Playbook misses an opportunity to mine that complexity ... The primary purpose of history is not to find lessons for our time, but to understand the past. Sifting through the complex record of the Federal Theatre Project and the Dies Committee to find contemporary resonance risks covering up as much as is reveals.
A brilliant and absorbing account ... This is an important, much-needed study whose relevance to our current culture wars is uncomfortably apparent from the first page ... A timely reminder both of the power of theater and of the vehement antipathy it can generate.
