Customer Comments

It was the genuine enthusiasm that came through in Christopher Buckley's N.Y. Times review that led me to read Less (thanks Powell's for the autographed copy). I can now join Buckley in asking “with regret why I wasn’t familiar with this author. My bad. His admirers have included John Updike, Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers and John Irving.” One disaster after another follows Arthur Less on a 50th birthday journey around the world, arranged so he can avoid attending the wedding of an ex-lover. Yet, as Buckley says, what bubbles up amid all these disasters isn’t self-pity but Arthur Less' warm humanity. By the end of your travels together you too will love Less.

A Middlemarch of foreign affairs, Clark delves deep into the historical record and shows us how his sleepwalking characters, countries as well as individuals, confronted with what might have been the Third Balkan War, unleashed the horror of the First World War. Thoughtful and clearly written commentary places meticulously researched history in context. While certainly a cautionary tale, Clark also carefully explains, despite disturbing similarities to our own times (a state supported terrorist network plotting suicide attacks for starters), that simple parallels do not always exist to the Europe of one hundred years ago.