Title: Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink: David Laskin Among the Intellos
Product review: David Laskin's journalistic and scatter-shot approach to this group of significant American intellectuals is disappointing. The emphasis is on anecdotes rather than motives, psychology, ideas, or works created. The book is lightly documented, and if you already know anything about the individual writers or the movements they were part of, you'll look in vain for new insights. It's certainly readable, but because it treats the subjects with so little context, the reader wonders after a bit why one should care about these folk, who sound more like a bunch of dysfunctional celebrities of the nineties than the defining minds of a complex and fascinating historical era.
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