I hate it when novelists insert public figures as characters in their novels. It's a cheap gimmick.

The author is the grandson of one of the principal characters. He's allowed.

But, to me, this book sounds like something more along the lines of "In Cold Blood" than a true novel, so the insertion of public figures doesn't seem very bothersome. I think I'll add this to my reading list.

Anderson is pretty much forgotten except by other writers, which is a shame. As Bayard notes in the first paragraph, Anderson's modern style, the first departure from Henry James, and concern with "ordinary" Americans prefigured just about all the better known writers of the twentieth century. His contemporaries were less Hemingway and Faulkner than H.L. Mencken and Ben Hecht.

This book seems to tread the line between fiction and nonfiction so closely that I wasn't sure just from reading the review whether it was a novel or not. (It is.) I know I'd rather read a historical work with real figures novelized into it Gore Vidal-style than one full of "fictional" characters whose identity you're supposed to guess at, the way Harold Robbins made so much money and still destroyed his career.

This sounds like a reader, something for the days after the election. Its tone reminds me of "Big Trouble," the classic of western murder whose author, Anthony Lukas, figured tragically in Bayard's last review, "Blue Genes." "Big Trouble" is a horribly long but totally compelling book. I hope this one is the same, only a little more concise. Any book you kill yourself over can't be called a total success.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Louis Bayard! I'm putting this in my Amazon cart the moment I finish this letter. I grew up in Southwest Virginia, and was taught by a Bondurant in elementary school. Those soft rolling mountains of home look peaceful, but they hide quite a lot of intensity and history. Looks like a great read.

Making a batch of hootch is so gotdam easy I bet we see a lot of such activity in the upcoming few years as folks everywhere-in every former walk-of-life grow to depend on their marketable ionstincts just to survive.

Maybe we can get some tips from this strong-sounding book.

Thanks for the snappy review.

This is a book NOT to be missed--I finished reading it in 2 days, then read it again. And I don't do that. Ever.