I have found the review section at Amazon.com to be a mixed bag in some cases. To be sure, some reviews are thoughtful and informative, and others point out areas of disagreement or place a book into context. Once in a while one comes across someone with an axe to grind. That’s part of the business.
Then again, occasionally one comes across someone like this, a soul so brave that one might at first overlook the fact that the reviewer is afraid to identify himself/herself.
The reviewer offers eighteen reviews, all awarding a single star. I am one of the targets, although at least in my case the reviewer struggled to come up with something more substantial (even if in the end those claims fell far short … the reviewer simply doesn’t understand what I wrote about Grant and drinking, choosing instead to engage in a mindless rant). However, the reviewer spews his vitriol across a broad spectrum of authors, attacking Larry Daniel, Thomas Lowry, Benson Bobrick, Chester Hearn, and Richard Williams. It is in his review of Mr. Williams’s book that the following howlers appear: “I am one of the nation’s leading Civil War historians and thus feel qualified to comment on the merits of this work…. My apologies for the tone of this review; it’s hardly my practice to invoke invective.” Yeah, right. Elsewhere the reviewer assures us: “As the author of sixteen books on the Civil War and Indian Wars of the American West, I feel qualified to judge the relative merits of this work.”
The comments section following his review of Mr. Williams’s book is engaging.
I saw the hostile review about my book years ago, and shrugged. Recently, when I was looking at more recent books, I came across more wild accusations against another author, and I decided to take a look at the reviewer’s track record. As you can see, it’s an interesting one, leading to some speculation among commenters as to the identity of the author.