Big Crowd (Baker) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
succeeds in creating a compelling imagined world. Most of the telling is through dialogue, and Baker's re-creation of the cadences and diction of another time is impressive…Best of all, the novel delivers on what the title promises, a detailed rendering of the relationships within that era's power cabal…I've read few other novels that portray in such a nuanced way the temptations of power, the complex division of control in a great metropolis and the perils of political deal-making in that environment. Baker doesn't like the Big Crowd any more than Tom O'Kane does, but, fortunately for us, he understands its workings very well.
Scott Turow - New York Times Book Review


With The Big Crowd, Kevin Baker earns the title of Best American Historical Novelist—heck, maybe best American novelist, period. This inspired, fun, serious, thought-provoking, page-turning book gives all the good, old pleasures: if you read it on the subway, be prepared to miss your stop. But Baker also raises the key questions about New York, about America, about who we are. Charlie and Tom O'Kane are characters for the ages." —Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life
Associated Press


Baker takes an all-but-forgotten crime—the William O’Dwyer case—and builds a novel as big and as blustery as the city it portrays. This sprawling saga traces the spectacular rise and fall of two Irish immigrant brothers during the course of the first half of the twentieth century.... Baker takes another juicy bite out of the Big Apple, demonstrating once again that nobody does old New York—in all its glamour and its grit—better. --Margaret Flanagan
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