Timely, immersive ... What a relief, after so many years of having this era defined by his lost generation of men, to come upon a different viewpoint — from a queer woman no less — of this charged time ... Braude excels at capturing the small details ... He is able to richly paint an era that strongly rhymes with our current moment ... Braude has delivered the prescient Flanner to us, nearly five decades after her death, at exactly the right moment.
An absorbing, expertly paced work of narrative nonfiction ... In the tradition of Erik Larson, who has published multiple bestsellers that set interpersonal dramas and true-crime accounts against the backdrop of great world events ... What sets Mr. Braude’s work apart from Mr. Larson’s—and what elevates it—is his interest in intellectual history.
Successful on many levels, including reintroducing Janet Flanner to new readers ... The true crime elements of the book are extremely effective ... Most especially, The Typewriter and the Guillotine does an excellent job of using compelling individual stories to explain seminal historical events.
The Typewriter part of Mark Braude’s account of midcentury Paris is the better part (and it’s actually about 80% of the book) ... The other storyline deals with a German con man named Eugen Weidmann, the guillotine, who must be the dullest and most hapless serial killer ever ... Honestly, The Typewriter and the Guillotine would be a better book without the Weidmann chapters. As a reader, it would be easy enough to skip right past them and get to the good stuff about fascinating Flanner.
Slight unevenness does not tarnish what is surely a significant work of nonfiction. Part biography, part true crime narrative, this book presents something rare: a novel story about interwar Paris.
