Encyclopedic without being discontinuous, the book hardly seems as long, as carefully constructed or as densely packed as it is. Though the ideas it explains are often complicated, the explanations it offers are limpidly clear . . . It offers the rare satisfaction of seeing a memoirist get memoired . . . White's occasional flying leaps of genius, it is funnier, more vivid, more focused. Even famous authors have mediocre days . . .
Magazines are best if consumed before a certain date.
They stale faster than books . . . The story jumps around erratically as if a mad scientist were randomly probing Berlinski's brain with an electrode . . . Berlinski has gone off the deep end. The prose isn't dry. It's sopping wet.