It has the makings of high drama. Crisis follows crisis. The problem is that, from Biden’s bleak inauguration to the surprise result of the midterms, we know the story in advance ... Foer’s description of the rival egos adds up to a profoundly unflattering portrait of America’s gerontocratic elite ... Thin and yet telling.
Although the book is brimming with novelistic details that Foer collected as he interviewed insiders behind the scenes, there are no especially urgent revelations ... Sometimes, however, Foer’s digressions into minutiae can feel like distractions ... In the ensuing hundreds of pages, he rarely discusses the jostling that roils the public sphere.
