scribepub's reviews
497 reviews

Woollett has wisely chosen to forgo the fetishism of death and Jim Jones that is so often the focus of this tragedy. With Beautiful Revolutionary, Woollett has created an utterly intoxicating portrait of the lives of those seeking to build something new in a world that seemed to be losing its mind. Although we know what awaits us, Woollett masterfully weaves a suspenseful and complex story about people — of their dreams, beliefs, ideals, and lives all coming to a horrific end — in a way that is uniquely hers. Woollett is electric.
Sarah Schmidt, Author of See What I Have Done

Laura Woollett’s imaginative retelling of the Jonestown tragedy does what only fiction can do — endows Jim Jones and his inner circle with a sense of humanity. She formulates answers to unknowable questions — how could otherwise sane people be pulled into Jones’s web of evil? What happened that last, tragic day? A lyrical and sharply rendered tale of innocence lost and ideals betrayed.
Julia Scheeres, Author of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown

[D]ramatic and intriguing, the quality of Woollett’s prose is the most enjoyable aspect of this novel … Reading Beautiful Revolutionary, it is easy to imagine how so many people could have been captivated and controlled by a man such as Jones … [A]n excellent work of literary historical fiction.
Books+Publishing, 4.5 Stars

Beautiful Revolutionary is some of the most exciting fiction I’ve encountered. It fearlessly explores the human elements that attracted masses to the Peoples Temple and to Jim Jones — fear, lust, the need to be loved, and the urge to feel a part of something larger than the self. This story cuts close to the bone, unrelenting and irrefutably true, over and over. Laura Elizabeth Woollett is an immense talent, and this is a bracing — and necessary — read.
Kayla Rae Whitaker, Author of The Animators

In this rich and skilled reimagining, Woollett joins the sprawling, doomed, and endlessly fascinating juggernaut of the Peoples Temple as it careens from fraught, idealistic inception in late-sixties California to desperately tragic demise in Guyana a decade later. Equal parts earth and ecstasy, pulsing with life, this book takes us deep within the lives of Jones’s followers and the unfurling of their inevitable, dark drama. Climb aboard, and hold on tight.
Peggy Frew, Author of Hope Farm

Woollett's writing makes this story an electricity storm. The clouds are weed smoke and the lightening charging through that haze is pure sexual energy. I'm almost half-way through and feel wholly transported. The world is both real and surreal; these characters alien and freakishly familiar to me. Completely gripping, and dripping with detail never overdone.
Bri Lee, author of Eggshell Skull

Beautiful Revolutionary has had me completely mesmerised – it has been so long since I’ve been so utterly engrossed and absorbed in a novel. The shifts in perspective are masterfully handled and offer a fascinating and nuanced portrait of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple. I do love cult novels and this is one of the best of them. The tension build to the inevitable conclusion is incredibly well done. I have nothing but love for this book, five beautiful stars.​ It's my number one Australian novel of the year.
Jaclyn Crupi, Bookseller at Hill of Content

She has taken years of extensive research, including interviews with surviving members of the Jones cult, then bent these facts into fictional shape … She follows Joan Didion, another sharp-eyed observer of the Californian scene in the ’60s and ’70s – another writer who appreciated how genuine human impulses could be harnessed and warped by the wrong kind of leader.
The Saturday Paper

It’s easy to see why Woollett is one of Australia’s leading young writers. The characters and observations are incisive and gripping, and prose masterful and electric.
Good Reading

[The] highlight of this book is Woollett’s prose style, which beautifully conveys the details of what is going on while at the same time wielding a less is more touch and power of suggestion, to maximise the psychological and physical tension of the story … Beautiful Revolutionary is part twisted love story, part dark, noirish, crime novel. I recommend it.
Pulp Curry

Laura Elizabeth Woollett has embarked on a brave quest with Beautiful Revolutionary — and the risk has paid off, with her historically rich and breathtakingly entertaining story about one female hippie searching for life’s meaning in all the wrong places.
Better Reading

A beautifully-written and certainly compelling novel.
The Lifted Brow

The book is the author’s interpretive fictional account, overlaid on a well-researched framework of fact and first-person description … Her writing is thought-provoking and at times luminous.
Weekend Press

Absolutely mesmerising. I didn’t want this to end … This story is meticulously researched and gets into your heart and mind and remains there for quite some time …[Woollett’s] a master of character and atmosphere.
Sam Still Reading

Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s Beautiful Revolutionary grabs attention from the beginning, not with narrative hooks but with the sheer penetration of its prose. Woollett’s debut novel is an imaginative refiguring of the Jonestown massacre story … a truly exciting writer
Weekend Australian

Woollett’s novel is brimming with historical detail and her depiction of Jonestown is impressive … A well-written account, it raises important questions about the desire for faith, especially in a time of crisis, and the dangerous appeal of a powerful personality dressed up as a revolutionary.
Australian Book Review

It’s a novel that benefits from deep research worn lightly, and from Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s sensitivity to the perversity of human character and behaviour.
The Saturday Age

A deeply intelligent telling of a deeply disturbing sideshow of history.
John Purcell, Booktopia

Woollett is considered Australia’s foremost expert on Jonestown, and her novel is a riveting tale of love, obsession and devotion. If you loved The Girls or Netflix's Wild Wild Country, this one’s for you.
Elle

A rich portrait of a highly mythologised historical incident. The passion that the author has had for her research shines through … for readers who appreciate a well-written, well-researched novel that approaches things from different angles.
Emily Paull, The AU Review

[T]raverses the uneasy terrain between historical fiction and all that cannot be known about the inner lives of real people. History blends with mythology … [D]evastating … Weighty and disquieting.
Kirkus

Woollett turns a dark chapter in U.S. history into a deeply human, satisfying read for fans of Emma Booklist

Woollett reclaims victims’ narratives from sensationalist headlines and re-educates her readers through sharp, expertly crafted fiction.
Anne Joyce, Irish Times

Woollett achieves psychologically complex portraits of her two protagonists — minister’s daughter Evelyn and conscientious objector Lenny — as they are indoctrinated into a degrading system of punishment and reward that delivers dire consequences for their marriage and sense of selfhood. Wry and incisive, but also imbued with great empathy for the trauma Jones wrought, Beautiful Revolutionary compels the reader to consider the conditions and compromises that allow groupthink to overpower individual responsibility and agency.
Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, Judges’ Comments

[Anderson is] at his best when describing the routines of life on the land ... Anderson’s style makes for easy reading, describing the landscape and probing into Dave’s past in short, unadorned sentences.
Margot Lloyd, Adelaide Advertiser

Australian author Richard Anderson is a farmer from NSW and his experience of life on the land really shines through in his second rural crime novel Boxed. It's a no nonsense mystery thriller with an interesting premise and fast paced plot … I thoroughly recommend Boxed by Richard Anderson to crime and mystery lovers everywhere.
Tracey Allen, Carpe Librum

I love that contemporary issues are woven into this mystery, that there is hope and a wonderful sense of community, that the characters are richly drawn and empathetic and that the mystery element shines brightly. I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Richard Anderson has a talent for storytelling that is mesmerising. I cannot wait to read what he writes next.
Reading, Writing and Riesling

Richard Anderson is fast becoming one of the best crime fiction writers to take on the Aussie Outback ... Boxed is a lot of fun; the characters are great and distinctly Australian, while the place-setting envelopes the reader in a unique rural Australian farming community.
Just a Guy Who Likes to Read

Boxed is original, idiosyncratic, atmospheric and satisfying.
Pile by the Bed

This is a clever and accomplished feat of storytelling with a satisfyingly gruesome climax, and a skilful evocation of Australian rural life.
Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Saturday Age

Written by a farmer from northern NSW, Boxed brings to life rural Australia and all its characters in a rollicking, and at times heartbreaking, mystery.
Gail Barnsley, Daily Telegraph

As with Richard Anderson’s earlier book Retribution, Boxed is rural crime fiction of the highest calibre.
Karen Chisolm, AustCrimeFiction

[Richard Anderson’s] really at his best when describing the routines of life on the land.
Margot Lloyd, Mercury

A carefully and cleverly plotted crime novel centred around the deeper theme of what it is to endure paralysing loss.
Andrea Thompson, AustCrime

Only Graeber, one of America’s greatest non-fiction writers, could take a subject so complex, dense and sprawling and turn it into a rollicking high-tension medical thriller. Masterful.
Douglas Rogers, award-winning journalist and author of The Last Resort

A gripping chronicle of the 100-year overnight success of immunotherapy. For myself and millions of other cancer survivors, The Breakthrough is a book of immense and essential hope.
Michael Fitzgerald, co-founder and CEO of Submittable, and author of Radiant Days

There is no villain more ruthless than cancer, which has robbed us all of loved ones who had to endure untold suffering before they succumbed. But after decades of frustration and toil, scientists finally understand how to vanquish the disease by activating the human body's natural defences. The intimate stories behind this triumph lie at the heart of Charles Graeber’s The Breakthrough, an expertly crafted and exhilarating account of life-saving ingenuity at its most dazzling. You will never encounter another book so incisive about the art of medical sleuthing, or so poetic about our innate drive to hold on to all that's beautiful in this world for as long as we can.
Brendan I. Koerner, Wired contributing editor and author of The Skies Belong to Us

Lucid and informed … Graeber gives readers a basis for both understanding the challenges involved and for cautious optimism that a cure can be found.
Publishers Weekly

Graeber concisely reviews the science of cancer … The risks of tinkering with an intricate immune system are obviously high, even perilous. But the potential reward is a cure. Exciting reading.
Booklist

Imagine a vaccine that could cure cancer. As this book reports, that possibility may not be far off … [T]he book offers hope for more effective treatments in the near future. A readable survey of the emerging field of immunotherapy in cancer treatment.
Kirkus

In Mr Graeber’s hands, the evolution of immuno-oncology is both captivating and heartbreaking.
The Wall Street Journal

Graeber’s writing is swift and clear, as if he can barely contain his enthusiasm for the subject — and, in fact, he can’t contain it ... One or two chapters are weighted down by talk of cell division and the like but, for the most part, Graeber paints vivid portraits of people who have cancer or are trying to conquer it ... a rare and thrilling thing: a hopeful, even inspiring, book about cancer.
Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The extraordinary story of how medical research may finally have made the ultimate breakthrough – a cure for cancer.
Sydney Morning Herald, Bianca Nogrady

The new book by Charles Graeber, The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, artfully traces the history of old and new developments that may have — finally — resulted in an actual cure for the most dreaded of all diseases.
Mimi Swartz, The New York Times

Fascinating and engaging … Written with the verve and tension of a medical thriller, Graeber vividly brings to life the scientists and physicians on the front-line battle with cancer and details in simple terms their efforts and breakthroughs.
Canberra Weekly

The Breakthrough not only provides good background and good understanding for patients, but is also a wonderful read, a book easily picked up but not easily put down — I'd recommend it for any patient interested in immunology of cancer.
Dr. James L. Gulley M.D. Ph.D., Director of Medical Oncology, Cheif of Immunology, National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Crisp and suspenseful ... an inspiring medical narrative.
BBC

Graeber does it again. He takes a complex topic — this time advances in cancer treatment — and weaves an engaging narrative that engages you to the end. With cancer as a leading cause of illness and death, this book is a timely and important account of the challenges and possibilities for new horizons in cancer treatment.
Diana J. Mason, PhD, Senior Policy Service Professor (George Washington University School of Nursing), Professor Emerita (Hunter College, City University of New York)

[A] deft, detailed study of cancer immunotherapy ... From the once-discredited pioneer William Coley to immunologist and Nobel laureate James P. Allison, they form a brilliant, driven, admirably stubborn group that Graeber brings vividly to life.
Nature

Fascinating ... [Graeber] weaves human stories with accounts of scientific progress, looking beyond the “cut, burn, and poison techniques” — surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy — to focus on the myriad ways the immune system can attack cancer, and provides hope that a cure might not be beyond imagination.
The National Book Review

The Breakthrough, reads like a crime thriller because that's what it is – the true story of a dedicated, persistent group of doctors and scientists stalking a killer: cancer … Brilliant.
Australian Financial Review

An entertaining and moving portrait of [Charles Graeber’s] trade ... As skilled a wordsmith as a surgeon.
Robin Osborne, GPSpeak

Challenging and stimulating on Swedish words … In common with Orwell she condemns chauvinism, but leaves room for patriotism, as love for a specific place, or language, matters as such one would not want to force upon others.
Göteborgs-Posten

Åsbrink as ever writes with clarity, sometimes incisive and poignant, and always with a great curiosity…The chapter on what the Swedes knew or did not know of the Holocaust is one of the most eloquent literary executions of Jan Guillou that has ever been written, this on his quite recent assertion that the Swedes did not hear of the genocide until after 1945.
Expressen

Åsbrink’s book is a singular achievement. It reveals more about the Swedes than it does Sweden. More on values, more on language and the world of ideas than on dates, or regencies and their length. The line of thought is unrestrained, leaping between different eras as it stumbles across parallels, the broad strokes of narrative freely punctuated with anachronism and digression, and as a work of reference for those of us who mostly spent our history lessons looking out of the classroom window, it is unbeatable.
Västerbottens-Kuriren

I hope Made in Sweden becomes a widely read book.
Smålandsposten, Barometern

This quirky inventory of Swedish values explores the shades of grey behind the branding of Sweden as the shiny home of ABBA and Volvo ... But it’s not all Bergmanesque gloom. Åsbrink also celebrates Swedes’ sacred relationship with nature, the achievements of its social reformers and the indefatigable biologist Carl Linnaeus.
Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald

This handsome little book surveys the things that have made Sweden the place it is today, from the suffragette who was Jane Austen’s “literary soul sister” to the “interesting lie” of Swedish neutrality during World War II.
The Weekend West

Drawing extensively on diary entries, papers and personal interviews with Australian soldiers, Gerster paints an intricate portrait of the moral and cultural disorientation felt by the Aussie ‘conquerors’ as they came to terms with not only an enemy decimated by atomic horror but also their own inherent prejudices ... the book is an immense achievement of research and a timely reminder of the tightrope balance of foreign occupation, a message that has particular relevance in today’s post-9/11 climate. It will be particularly popular among avid history readers looking for a new angle on the wartime Australian experience.
Bookseller+Publisher

Robin Gerster is a superb writer and in his hands the numerous anecdotes, incidents and details of the occupation gleaned from extensive combing of archives, newspapers, diaries and novels come to life. In lesser hands, the wealth of individual observations might weigh down the narrative, but one of the strengths of Atomic Sunshine is its concentration on personal encounters and perceptions.
Jeff Kingston, Japan Times

An excellent book, vividly describing a little known episode of Australian history.
Peter Beale, Newcastle Herald

Elegant and sardonic history ...
Hamish McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald

This troubling, significant book offers us a crucible of what Australians can be like in victory over a justly hated enemy.
Barry Hill, The Age

... A well-written and highly readable account of an interesting episode in Australian history and a valuable addition to the growing literature on the history of Australia's relations with Asia.
The International History Review

Gerster, who draws on a rich supply of sources, tells an absorbing story of two nations in a state of change.
Lucy Sussex, The Sunday Age

Gerster’s Travels in Atomic Sunshine is a scholarly, superbly documented study and a narrative written in a highly readable style. It incorporates provocative arguments and sophisticated insights without becoming ‘academic’. It is a book that is bound to become a classic social history of a major era of the Australian-Japanese postwar encounter.
David Palmer, Transnational Literature

In a rich meeting of history and literature, Gerster explores the big issues of race, culture, and national identity as victor and vanquished meet in the aftermath of a world war. The love, betrayal, greed, generosity, compassion, and casual brutality of individuals are his evidence and the strength of his narrative.
Hank Nelson

Robin Gerster’s brilliant account of the little-known story of Australia’s occupation force provides new, and often unsettling, insights into Australian responses to Japan and the Japanese at the end of the Second World War. Amid the atomic wasteland of Hiroshima, Australians and Japanese fraternized across the barriers of language, history, and different wartime experiences. Gerster’s evocative cultural history of Australian–Japanese relations is as hard-hitting as it is perceptive.
Kate Darian-Smith

Gerster has a fascinating story to tell and he has done so in a lively and compelling narrative way that makes Travels in Atomic Sunshine accessible to readers well beyond the historical profession.
Judges’ comments from the 2009 NSW Premier’s History Awards

This is a fascinating study of cross-cultural contact and the ways that World War 2 changed the attitudes of many Australians ... Of particular note is Gerster’s nuanced and careful analysis of fiction and memoir, which allows a candour and intimacy not always accessible in other sources.
Judges’ comments from the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History

Chris Wilson is a remarkable person who, through his struggles and accomplishments, has much to teach us all. The Master Plan is an incredibly moving book that will change the way you look at the criminal justice system.
Senator Bernie Sanders

The Master Plan adds a personal narrative to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, making it equally important. Chris Wilson is our generation's go-to voice on mass incarnation and redemption. Not only does he brilliantly articulate his struggle, he offers a clear path to what needs to be done if we truly want reform. The difference between Wilson and other scholars is that he doesn't only talk about the ills of the system — he's survived that system and changed his life, and now spends his time helping other people do the same. This book will change the world.
D Watkins, bestselling author of The Beast Side and The Cook Up

A brutally confessional indictment of mass incarceration America.
Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Parting the Waters

The Master Plan is a bright light in a moment of moral darkness. Chris Wilson’s story is both a triumph and a call to arms on behalf of the incarcerated. It is a love letter to the millions of people like him, languishing because of our inaction. With The Master Plan, Chris makes it clear he will not allow them to be forgotten.
Nathtalie Molina Niño

I’ve admired Chris Wilson’s work with the underprivileged and returning citizens for the last three years, but as this book proves, you don't really know a man until you understand his struggle. Do not miss this story of redemption, empowerment and giving back. It can change your life.
Van Jones, TV show host and author of Beyond the Messy Truth

This is a brave book, full of thought-provoking insight on criminal justice, the modern prison system and the possibility of redemption. And yet, what sticks with me most is the beautiful, heartbreaking mother-son relationship. There is nothing more powerful than meeting the people we label to dismiss — addicts, criminals, convicts, etc — and getting deeply enmeshed in their struggles, successes and too-often-unrealised dreams. Thank you, Chris Wilson, for taking us into the cave, so that we can better understand the light.
Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

Uplifting … Wilson candidly shares the eye-opening details of his time in prison with a prose style that moves with directness and refreshingly unfettered honesty … A smoothly written memoir steeped in positive reinforcement and hope for the future.
Kirkus

The Master Plan is less of a roadmap and more of a philosophy that we should all take to heart: we are all better than our worst decision, our sense of justice should honour the redemptive possibilities inherent in every person, and our destinies are truly intertwined.
Wes Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore

Inspiring without being preachy, Wilson’s manifesto will greatly appeal to today’s youth.
Publishers Weekly

Truly inspiring … Wilson engagingly tells his riveting story while also exposing corrupt justice practices … Highly recommended [for] anyone who loves an uplifting life story.
Booklist

While behind bars, Wilson started a business, earned a GED and an associate's degree. Wilson wasn't a natural student, but he was determined. To pass a qualifying exam, he took and failed one math problem 67 times, eventually passing on his 68th try … Wilson's voice comes through loud and clear in this memoir that should have wide appeal.
Library Journal

To say anything worthwhile about antisemitism you need calm, lucidity, intelligence, and a faultless moral compass, all powered by a proper feeling for racial justice. Deborah Lipstadt has the entire skillset. That’s why her new book is so welcome, so necessary, and so clear.
David Hare

Antisemitism comes in different shades, all of them ugly — not least when it comes from those who regard themselves as champions of liberation. To fight this abomination in all its shades, Deborah Lipstadt has given us a sage, sober, and lucid manual for the perplexed and willfully blind. An outstandingly useful book.
Todd Gitlin, Author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage>/i>

A must read at the time of a mounting wave of aggressive nationalism and xenophobia in the world today.
Professor Jan Gross, Author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

A leading scholar of Judaism explores just about every manifestation of contemporary antisemitism, with plenty of history included for context … A didactic tour de force approachably presented.
Kirkus

The most powerful and important element of Antisemitism is Lipstadt’s clarity on the impact of words. Violence doesn’t just appear out of the blue – it is enabled and encouraged by language … Her book is essential reading for anyone perplexed about antisemitism and how we got to this point.
Ruth Smeeth, Mail on Sunday

[Lipstadt] has written a book that combines erudition, clarity, accessibility, and passion at a moment when they could not be needed more.
The New York Times Book Review

The book deals with Trump, the alt-right, social media and Holocaust denial, European populism, Islamism, leftist anti-Zionism and Jeremy Corbyn. So it covers, and covers well, the big concerns of modern Jewry. … a valuable book.
The Times

A timely book about contemporary anti-semitism — timely because all the signs are that we are entering an era when this ancient prejudice is having new life breathed into it.
Hugh Linehan, The Irish Times

This is not an academic history of antisemitism. It’s something more valuable—an act of zooming in the moral lens on what is happening in the world today ... Read Lipstadt’s new book. And then give it to your children and grandchildren. It is that good—and it is that relevant.
Jeffrey Salkin, Religion News Service

Lipstadt’s insight and perspective contextualise current events ... crafting an informative read for those interested in social justice and political and Jewish history. STARRED REVIEW
Library Journal

Keeping her tone measured and carefully noninflammatory, Lipstadt presents an intelligent, evenhanded explanation of why Jews come under attack today. Informed, historically sound, and deeply rational, her book offers both convincing reasons for the recent rise of antisemitism and apt advice to ‘call out and combat’ it.
Publishers Weekly

The present book is not a history but a reckoning with antisemitism in its current guises and contortions.
Geoffrey Brahm Leven, Canberra Times

[T]he timeliness of Lipstadt’s nuanced and accessible discussion of contemporary antisemitism cannot be overstated ... Lipstadt provides a useful taxonomy of antisemites ... Antisemitism: here and now is a sobering but accessible read by an eminent scholar.
Helene Meyers, Washington Independent Review of Books

A rigorous examination of [antisemitism’s] alarming rise worldwide ... Her central thesis, that
“genocide begins with words not with acts of violence” is a reminder of the urgent need to call out and resist anti-Semitism in all its guises.
Australian Financial Review

In a very accessible and thoroughly interesting book, the author has managed to pack in a terrific amount of thoughtful material, ranging from why she prefers to spell it ‘antisemitism’ (no hyphen or capitalisation) through to her rugged defence of free speech.
Anthony Smith, NZ International Review

Lipstadt isn’t just interested in compiling a list of affronts, abuses, and attacks, which would be, in itself, a substantial achievement. She also explores with remarkable insight and balance the difference between anti-Semitism and racism ... [A] timely, nuanced, clear, accessible, and ultimately optimistic book.
Ilana Snyder, Australian Book Review

Professor Lipstadt traces a dramatic rise in antisemitism since about 2000 with a particular uptake since 2016.
Nick O’Malley, Sydney Morning Herald

You know you’re old when it needs an historian to evoke the years of your youth. Thank you for your sterling efforts, Sally Percival Wood, for bringing the ’60s back to life so vividly that I can now pretend to remember them.
Phillip Adams, AO

Sally Percival Wood has done our cultural history a great favour … Her deep and broad interrogations yield a coherent story of social change, much of it intriguing in her telling, which adds up to a powerful rejection of the reactionary dismissal of [the era].
Phillip Frazer, founder of Go-Set, Revolution, High Times, Rolling Stone (Australia), and The Digger.

Dissent is a welcome and overdue contribution to Australia’s experience of the global 1960s. Its wide-ranging narrative and excellent storytelling will no doubt prove foundational to future research in the field, and is a testament to Wood’s long and productive career in public history.
Jon Piccini, Australian Journal of Politics and History

You might think that a book about growing up on a poor Kansas farm would qualify as ‘sociology,’ and Heartland certainly does … But this book is so much more than even the best sociology. It is poetry — of the wind and snow, the two-lane roads running through the wheat, the summer nights when work-drained families drink and dance under the prairie sky.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Author of Nickel and Dimed

Sarah Smarsh is one of America’s foremost writers on class. Heartland is about an impossible dream for anyone born into poverty — a leap up in class, doubly hard for a woman. Smarsh’s journey from a little girl into adulthood in Kansas speaks to tens of thousands of girls now growing up poor in what so many dismiss as ‘flyover country.’ Heartland offers a fresh and riveting perspective on the middle of the nation all too often told through the prism of men.
Dale Maharidge, Author of Pulitzer-Prize-Winning And Their Children After Them

Sarah Smarsh — tough-minded and rough-hewn — draws us into the real lives of her family, barely making it out there on the American plains. There’s not a false note. Smarsh, as a writer, is Authentic with a capital A … This is just what the world needs to hear.
George Hodgman, Author of Bettyville

[A] powerful message of class bias ... A potent social and economic message [is] embedded within an affecting memoir.
Kirkus, Starred Review

Her project is shot through with compassion and pride for the screwed-over working class, even while narrating her emergence from it.
Vulture

[A] memoir for our times.
Medium

A poignant look at growing up in a town 30 miles from the nearest city; learning the value and satisfaction of hard, blue-collar work, and then learning that the rest of the country see that work as something to be pitied; watching her young mother's frustration with living at the “dangerous crossroads of gender and poverty” and understanding that such a fate might be hers, too. This idea is the thread that Smarsh so gracefully weaves throughout the narrative; she addresses the hypothetical child she might or might not eventually have and in doing so addresses all that the next generation Middle Americans living in poverty will face.
Buzzfeed

The difficulty of transcending poverty is the message behind this personal history of growing up in the dusty farmlands of Kansas, where “nothing was more painful ... than true things being denied” ... The takeaway? The working poor don't need our pity; they need to be heard above the din of cliché and without so-called expert interpretation. Smarsh's family are expert enough to correct any misunderstandings about their lives.
Oprah.com

Sarah Smarsh looks at class divides in the United States while sharing her own story of growing up in poverty before ultimately becoming a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Her memoir doesn't just focus on her own story; it also examines how multiple generations of her family were affected by economic policies and systems.
Stephanie Topacio Long, Bustle

If you're working towards a deeper understanding of our ruptured country, then Sarah Smarsh's memoir and examination of poverty in the American heartland is an essential read. Smarsh chronicles her childhood on the poverty line in Kansas in the '80s and '90s, and the marginalization of people based on their income. When did earning less mean a person was worth less?
Elena Nicolaou, Refinery29

Blending memoir and reportage, a devastating and smart examination of class and the working poor in America, particularly the rural working poor. An excellent portrait of an often overlooked group.
Jaime Herndon, BookRiot

Candid and courageous ... Smarsh's raw and intimate narrative exposes a country of economic inequality that has failed its children.
Publishers Weekly, starred review

Journalist Smarsh uses her background growing up in rural Kansas to illustrate the economic plight of the rural working poor … Will appeal to readers who enjoy memoirs and to sociologists. While Smarsh ends on a hopeful note, she offers a searing indictment of how the poor are viewed and treated in this country.
Caren Nichter, Library Journal

‘“Class is an illusion with real consequences”, Smarsh writes in this candid and courageous memoir of growing up in a family of working-class farmers in Kansas during the 1980s and ’90s … Smarsh’s raw and intimate narrative exposes a country of economic inequality that "has failed its children.
Publishers Weekly

Growing up as one of the working poor has become a familiar theme of memoirs of late, but this book is more than a female-authored Hillbilly Elegy (2016). Smarsh employs an unusual and effective technique, throughout the book addressing her daughter, who does not, in reality, exist. Rather, she's the future that seemed destined for Smarsh, the same future that had been destined for and realised by all the women in her family … Elucidating reading on the challenges many face in getting ahead.
Joan Curbow, Booklist

A deeply humane memoir with crackles of clarifying insight, Heartland is one of a growing number of important works … that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline. Or, perhaps, simply: class.
Francesca Mari, The New York Times Book Review

Her book is smart, nuanced and atmospheric … In Heartland, Smarsh powerfully talks back to a world that mostly told her and her family they were disposable.
Maureen Corrigan, NPR

Heartland is her map of home, drawn with loving hands and tender words. This is the nation’s class divide brought into sharp relief through personal history … [A] welcome interruption in the national silence that hangs over the lives of the poor and a repudiation of the culture of shame that swamps people who deserve better.
Elizabeth Catte, The Washington Post

The book is a personal, decades-long story of America’s coordinated assault on its underclass … This is a tough, no-nonsense woman telling truth, and telling it hard ... The strongest element of Heartland, then, is its unabashed womanliness. At a time of national reckoning about endemic misogyny, Heartland does some serious feminist consciousness raising.
Leah Hampton, Los Angeles Review

In her sharply-observed, big-hearted memoir, Heartland, Smarsh chronicles the human toll of inequality, her own childhood a case study … [T]here’s an emotional power that comes through, a resonance that keeps readers focused on the weight and importance of Smarsh’s project.
Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

Part memories, part economic analysis, part sociological treatise, Heartland ties together various threads of American society of the last 40 years ... Smarsh’s book is persuasive not only for the facts she marshals, but also because of the way she expresses it.
Dale Singer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

This is a provocative, well-researched book for our times. … a difficult, but illuminating, book for these class-riven times.
Kim Ode, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Smarsh’s Heartland is a book we need: an observant, affectionate portrait of working-class America that possesses the power to resonate with readers of all classes.
Anita Felicelli, San Francisco Chronicle

Something about Sarah Smarsh’s writing makes you light up inside. You feel her joy and grief, fury and hope ... That is how I felt reading Smarsh’s book: as if the world could wait until I got to the end. Smarsh’s book belongs with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy as a volume with a transformative vision—a message for a blind and uncaring America, which needs to wake up. Hopefully we will not just open our eyes. Hopefully we will also change.
The American Conservative

Combining heartfelt memoir with eye-opening social commentary, Smarsh braids together the stories of four generations of her rural red-state family.
People

In a memoir written with loving candor, the daughter of generations of serially impoverished Kansas wheat farmers and working-poor single mothers chronicles a family’s unshakeable belief in the American dream and explains why it couldn't help but fail them.
Ms. Magazine

Smarsh’s book, a soul-baring meditation on poverty and class in America, tells the stories of her family’s wounded women, their farming men and her own wrenching choice to snap the three-generation cycle of teenage motherhood into which she was born ... Her moving memoir can be seen as the female, Great Plains flip side to 2016’s best-selling Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance: a loving yet unflinching look at the marginalized people who grow America’s food, build its houses and airplanes but never seem to share fully in its prosperity.
New York Post

Smarsh seamlessly interweaves [her family’s] tales with her own experiences and the political happenings of the day to tell a story that feels complete, honest and often poetic ... Heartland shines brightest in moments like these, when colorful anecdotes bring childhood memories vividly to life. Beyond their entertainment value, these stories flesh out nuanced characters in complex situations, dispelling stereotypes about the working class. Smarsh bookends these engaging tales with social commentary and historical information ... Heartland draws its strength from its storytelling and authority from its context and commentary.
Texas Observer

An important, timely work that details a family, a landscape, and a country that has changed dramatically since Smarsh’s birth in 1980. Heartland puts a very human face on the issue of economic inequality while also serving as an outstretched hand of sorts across the economic divide, seeking to connect readers from all economic backgrounds through a shared American story.
Iowa City Gazette

Heartland is an important book for this moment ... Smarsh emerges as a writer, most potently, in her vivid encounters with the ironies of working-class life — her reflections on what it means to live poor can turn startlingly poetic.
EntertainmentWeekly.com

You might have read Sarah Smarsh’s viral New York Times op-ed, which deconstructed the myth of the “aggrieved laborer: male, Caucasian, conservative, racist, sexist” with reference to the experiences and opinions of her working-class father. In this memoir, she fully explores the impact of poverty on her family.
Elle.com

Startlingly vivid ... an absorbing, important work in a country that needs to know more about itself.
Christian Science Monitor

Searing, timely and blazingly eloquent, Heartland challenges readers to look beyond tired stereotypes of the rural Midwest and is a testament to the value (on many levels) of “flyover country”.
Shelf Awareness

Heartland offers an excellent example of narrative journalism, writing which relies both on well-researched, well-presented factual information and exceptional storytelling. But additionally, Smarsh employed a wholly unique device throughout the book to firmly pull readers into what is, at times, a very intimate retelling.
Susanna Baird, Spine Magazine

Throughout the book Smarsh directly addresses her unborn child and while this unique framing device might have seemed contrived were it handled by a lesser writer, Smarsh’s prose is extraordinarily beautiful, evocative and unsentimental, and framing the book in this way reveals unique insights into gender, the body and poverty … [Heartland] offers a more nuanced analysis of gender, race, and class within the power structures of American politics and culture.
Kara Nicholson, Readings

Reading Sarah Smarsh’s memoir, Heartland, I find myself agreeing with nearly every piece of social commentary she writes … She describes the way post-Reagan neoliberalism, followed by all presidents since, has destroyed a workable system of social welfare and made education and healthcare less affordable, while promoting the myth that the poor are poor only because they are either stupid or lazy.
Listener

An anthem of solidarity with the rural working poor; and a hymn of praise for the fortitude. FOUR STARS
Jennifer Somerville, Good Reading Magazine

Exceptional writing and an eye-opening story.
Sarah Lang, North and South

[A] knockout ... the book does not fall into a clichéd rags to riches story and delights in the many beautiful moments and lessons without overdosing on sentimentality ... the book’s spirit and detail connects on many more levels than just geographic recognition. There is an abundance of stories for people of all types to connect with — whether it be family tension, institutional discrimination, or dealing with loss.
Madison White, Entropy

A beautifully rendered memoir about growing up on a poor farm in Kansas ... Though not overtly political, Smarsh offers many insights into how America has done a disservice to the destitute and asserts that the poor are not responsible for their distress. Smarsh’s engaging, authentic voice makes Heartland a standout.
Mandy Nevius, Manhattan Book Review

[A]mbitious and moving.
Caroline Fraser, The New York Review of Books

Sarah Smarsh’s new book, Heartland, provides a searing description of the utter chaos that being poor entails. It reads at times like a simple memoir of a Kansas farming family struggling to keep up, at others as a social critique of America’s economic structure.
Jim Swearingen, The National Book Review

An eye-opening memoir which reveals the challenges and entrenched deprivation of working-class poverty in America.
Clare Lacey, Style Media

Robert Gott is an exceptional crime writer with six books under his belt.
Mark Rubbo, Readings

This masterly suspense novel by Robert Gott had me reading all night. Although it’s the third in a series, this was my first — and it stands alone as a great individual read ... However, it’s the rapid-fire storyline and expert plotting that make this novel a quick read, while great characters and astute social observations will keep you glued to the pages and invested in the outcome.
Karina Barrymore, Herald Sun

The Autumn Murders is a triumph not to be missed: a gripping whodunit, elevated by the polish and style to be expected from its author.
Mel O’Connor, Echo

A pacy novel ... Gott does the wartime setting well, tying it in with the Joe Sable sub-plot, and the ending nicely sets up for the next book in this series.
Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Saturday Age

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It brought home to me many effects of the war on Australian society.
Mysteries in Paradise