The result is a thrilling and illuminating tale ... This early section of the book is one of the most entertaining, in its swashbuckling sweep and dash ... A trove of fascinating stories.
If Mr. Kaag’s chronicle in these later chapters is less cohesive than the earlier ones, it nevertheless maps out a general outline of 19th-century American history, with its violent conflict over slavery and the rise of corporate industrialism ... An examination of the family’s women or the servants who attended the clan almost certainly would have shown a different side of this family’s remarkable history.
Instead of telling an unbroken story, Kaag has assembled a series of portraits, some more engaging than others, the degree of interest determined by which great men are adjacent to the male Blood in question ... Kaag warmly welcomes the idea of the incomplete, of a cobbled-together and eternally unfinished worldview; he finds it frustrating but also encouraging. At the same time, he can’t resist imposing an overarching unity.
