Parker has trawled the letters and literature, and travelled out to Suriname, and the result is a miniature masterpiece….this is a truly extraordinary tale and, in Parker’s hands, it’s beautifully told. With great wit and scholarship he reveals — just for a moment — a cruel and curious world, before it vanishes again beneath the trees.

An excellent account…Willoughbyland is popular history at its best.

A fascinating tale of courage and desperation, cruelty and betrayal, and it was all sparked by the search for the legendary city of gold, El Dorado.

The author has written several other highly enjoyable histories of the Caribbean, and he is on fine and colourful form here.

A fascinating tale…Matthew Parker is an entertaining historian who has produced a lively account.

[T]he long-obscure but intriguing Willoughbyland can now console itself that it has, in this frequently fascinating book, a history it deserves.

An odd, bygone moment in England's political dreaming, rendered expertly.

[A]n enjoyable account of a neglected moment in the emergence of the British empire.

‘An excellent book throwing light on a fascinating period in history... An enjoyable read… Impeccably well-researched.’

Some might question whether Ferguson really needs 1000 pages to tell half of Kissinger's life. Other will revel in the wealth of detail on this most controversial of American statesman

a formidably detailed, closely argued study of the making of one of the giants of 20th-century foreign policy

Mark Binelli has succeeded in synthesizing the tragedy and absurdity that Detroiters face each and every day in America’s fastest shrinking city. Yes, things are dire in Motor City, but Binelli refuses to perform an autopsy on a place that still radiates rage, pride, hustle, and hope. Detroit, he discovers, is very much alive

Before turning the buffalo (or the artists) loose on the haunted prairie that was once Detroit, we should ponder why a great American metropolis was allowed to die. Mark Binelli, Motor City native returned, provides a picaresque but unflinchingly honest look at the crime scene. Like Richard Pryor, he has the rare talent to make you laugh and cry at the same time

[The Last Days of Detroit] is a brilliant kaleidoscope of everything that is great, broken, inspiring, heart-breaking, and ultimately remarkable about Detroit. Mark Binelli has turned the story of the city, and by extension America, into a glorious, unforgettable work of art

At once hilarious and sharp, sweeping and intimate, [The Last Days of Detroit] is an oddly delighted warning from the recent future. With the tender scrutiny of a returning exile, Mark Binelli has written a non-fiction novel about our American experiment, and it’s the most entertaining and persuasive book about this country I’ve read in a very long time

Mark Binelli is a first-rate reporter, gifted with the ability to get almost anybody to open up. [The Last Days of Detroit] is searching, wide-angle, honest, deeply moving, and unshakably dark. It is a vivid slice of our time and implies a disquieting prophecy of the future

An encounter with a longstanding black resident reveals underlying tensions “Detroit isn't some kind of abstract art project." Binelli's achievement is to make that vividly apparent

Mark Binelli’s The Last Days of Detroit is a magnificent anthem to one of America’s most significant cities. He takes you on a tour into the dark heart of this once vibrant city, the home of the Ford car. This is a beautiful prose poem to a fascinating city and to post-industrial America

Succeeds in bringing out angles on Detroit that at least this casual observer hadn’t heard before

Both a history and a thoughtful travelogue… British readers might wonder what Detroit has to do with them, but the collapse of manufacturing, its yawning unemployed, the tension generated by a usually white liberal class who seize on gentrification possibilities (and the desire to turn dereliction into abstract art) are universal modern concerns

Mark Binelli’s surprisingly joyful book

A remarkable trawl through the sorry and tragic recent history of a city that was once heralded as the future of the United States

Binellis shows us that a brighter economic future may be possible even in the most benighted of cities

The value of this book lies not just in its compelling story, but in its lessons for all the West

Now the city and above all its people have been brilliantly captured

[A] wry, inquisitive survey of Detroit's troubled past and present... Surprisingly joyful

This journalistic account tells an enthralling, balanced story