Susan Wels

Considered on an anecdote-by-anecdote level, Susan Wels writes well, but taken as a whole, An Assassin in Utopia is a bit of a mess. If there is a central point that Wels is trying to make about the assassination of the U.S. President James Garfield in the 1880s, it's lost amid all the tangents and digressions. I mean, it's certainly horrifyingly gripping to learn that two whales boiled to death in a fire at a "museum" run by P.T. Barnum, but what does it have to do with anything that the book's about? Not a terrible book, but an unnecessary one.… (altro)