Zesty ... Erudite ... Wiencek squeezes the story of these two protean figures into a mere 262 pages, and, for once, readers might want at least a hundred more. Brisk as it is, it’s a skim coating—a gilt all of its own—that leaves out the full reach of these two extraordinary men and their time ... By first-naming his protagonists, and all that that implies, in this hurried account, Wiencek runs the risk of turning this epic into Stan and Gus’s Excellent Adventure.
