Chicago Tribune
"The book is terrifically entertaining and engaging. The elements he is able to pull together and weave into a narrative that so convincingly pinpoints how we arrived at this moment are consistently novel and interesting."
—John Warner, The Chicago Tribune
The Toronto Star
"Kurt Andersen, with a rare talent, has written a history book like a police procedural that tracks the murder of a country, an economic and moral decline that began just when the U.S. was becoming more fair and equal…So good, it should be assigned reading."
Heather Mallick, The Toronto Star
David Rothkopf
"A great, really important, exceptionally well-done, extraordinarily timely book. It's brilliant, and the best summation of how we got here that I've ever read."
David Rothkopf, Deep State Radio
Michael Tomasky
"Evil Geniuses is engaging, enraging, enthralling, appalling; a true tour de force. And most of all, it's the truth. Exactly the book we need right now."
Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast columnist, author of If We Can Keep It
Walter Isaacson
“This is the one book everyone must read as we figure out how to rebuild our country. A triumph.”
Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci
Rebecca Carroll
“Evil Geniuses is a vivid catalog of American socio-political history...with Andersen as its clear-eyed, masterful archivist.”
Rebecca Carroll, host of WNYC’s Come Through, author of Surviving the White Gaze
John Heilemann
“A dazzling, mind-bending, must-read chronicle.”
John Heilemann, host of Showtime's The Circus, author of Game Change and Double Down
NYTBR
“[An] essential, absorbing, infuriating, full-of-facts-you-didn’t-know new book...a radicalized moderate’s moderate case for radical change," in which he "carefully, meticulously, overwhelmingly, argues through facts. As he makes this wide-ranging case, Andersen never loses the texture of actual human beings. He is a graceful, authoritative guide, and he has a Writer-with-a-capital-W’s ability to defamiliarize the known."
Anand Giridharadas, New York Times Book Review
Jacob Weisberg
“Kurt Andersen interrogates the past half century with characteristic intellectual ambition and literary bravado...at once cultural history, memoir, and riff.”
Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy and Ronald Reagan: A Biography
Justin Webb
"Elegantly written, full of insight, and ultimately optimistic, Evil Geniuses challenges America to do better, to be better. If you want to know why America is where it is and how it can change: this is your book. Above all Evil Geniuses is fun to read: it's a romp. It educates and amuses. It challenges us too: keep the faith. Things really can get better. For lovers of America this is your go-to book. A wry look at what went wrong and sober thinking about what needs to happen now."
—Justin Webb, host of BBC One's Breakfast News
The Guardian
“Evil Geniuses is Kurt Andersen at his riveting best - a genuinely original exploration of the forces that have shaped today's economy and society, and what can be done to repair the damage. A route-map out of the strange season of pandemic.”
—Matt D’Ancona, The Guardian (U.K.)