John Pilger is the antidote to easy, comfortable thinking, to smugness, to ignorance. He is necessary

Pilger has a gift for finding the image, the instant, that reveals all. He is a photographer using words instead of a camera

Pilger is the closest we have to the great correspondents of the 1930s. The truth in his hands is a weapon, to be picked up and used in the struggle against injustice

This is a history book with a difference. It is imaginative in its approach, courageous in its execution and expansive in its sweep of interest...His approach is radical and interesting...It is a fine example of how a radically new point of departure can cast light on a range of areas over which the specialists will continue to do battle long into the future.

A meticulously researched work of scholarship, but is also a delightfully personal account of Dalby's year among the geisha. Geisha remains [Dalby's] best-known work and is the bible of geisha studies to this day

Popular history in the best sense...its attention to human detail and its commanding prose call to mind the best work of Barbara Tuchman