Reviews/Events

My Seward book has now been reviewed in the New Yorker and in the Economist.

The New Yorker review is not the customary few sentences; it is several pages, a long essay about Seward and his role in American history.  The reviewer said some very nice things:  the book is “masterly,” a “subtle portrait of this confounding figure.”  The Economist is somewhat more critical, but again says some nice things:  “Mr Stahr’s account is comprehensive and painstaking, aided by his subject’s trove of correspondence.”

As friends have seen these reviews they have written to let me know:  I have heard from New York and London and Hong Kong.  I am gratified and somewhat overwhelmed:  it is not every book, it is very few books, that receive this kind of attention.  Seward deserves at least half the credit.  He is the one who lived the important and interesting life:  I am just the person who uncovered and presented it.

I am off tomorrow for the Pacific Northwest, where I have events in Seattle on Monday and Portland on Tuesday.  Then back east to rejoin my family and my mock trial students.