Two good quotes ...

... from the Times Literary supplement.

The first is from a review by Hal Jensen published in the issue of Nov. 18, 2005, of Andrew Biswell's The Real Life of Anthony Burgess:

Biswell not only understands, he enjoys, his subject's evasiveness and inventiveness. Indeed, his central achievement is the way he quietly persuades the reader that the real Anthony Burgess is not to be found in the documents and reminiscences that tug and pull his own version of events into a more accurate, verifiable shape, but in the writer tugging and pulling at reality until it suits his needs. In other words, the real life of a writer is to be found in his works.

The second is from a review by C. Bradley Thompson published in the issue of Dec. 9, 2005 of David McCullough's 1776 and Stanley Weintraub's Iron Tears:

If academic historians are writing the histories of ordinary people doing ordinary things (which, it turns out, ordinary people find tediously ordinary), David McCullough, Stanley Weintraub and the non-professional historians are writing books that examine oridinary (and great) people doing great things -- and that makes all the difference. Maybe it's a good thing that academic historians have abandoned writing books on the American Revolution. In any event, it's no loss.