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Outstanding
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Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown
[A] vast yet compact, contemplative yet unfailingly urgent chronicle of the great and hated general's scorched-earth campaign across the collapsing Confederacy. [23 Sep 2005, p.92]
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Outstanding
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Houston Chronicle Fritz Lanham
Hewing closely to historical facts, The March emerges as a powerfully affecting novel, rendering the absurdities and horrors of war and the capriciousness with which it snuffs out some, spares others.
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
Doctorow's previous novels have earned multiple major literary awards. The March should do so as well. [15 Jul 2005, p.752]
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Richard Eder
"The March" is jangly, loose-jointed and an almost unqualified triumph; it is closer in spirit to "Ragtime"--even in its near-musical vignette form--than to the author's other novels. [18 Sep 2005]
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Doctorow's gift for getting into the heads of a remarkable variety of characters, famous or ordinary, make this a kind of grim Civil War Canterbury Tales. [18 July 2005, p. 177]
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Outstanding
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Boston Globe Madison Smartt Bell
[This novel] is a mosaic composed of ''little" lives, each with its uniquely human value, destroyed or saved by the hazards of war.
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Outstanding
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Chicago Sun-Times Lloyd Sachs
A connivingly understated work that at times suggests a meeting of Catch-22 and The Red Badge of Courage.
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Outstanding
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Ken Babstock
This is a compelling, complex and unsettling novel, featuring a vacuum of moral ambiguity where we'd normally expect a protagonist. [24 Sept. 2005]
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Outstanding
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The New Yorker John Updike
Doctorow here appears not so much a reconstructor of history as a visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry
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Outstanding
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USA Today Dierdre Donahue
For the many Americans who want to understand this profound experience that continues to shape our attitudes and actions today, The March offers stunning insight.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post John Wray
It's a credit to Doctorow's skill -- both as a writer and an entertainer -- that the task of following the narrative through so many loops and curlicues comes to seem, as the book twists willfully toward its end, something like a privilege.
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Outstanding
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Chicago Tribune Art Winslow
History has always been Doctorow's muse and his playground... In "The March," however, he may have found his apogee.
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Outstanding
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The Nation Vince Passaro
The March is a very fine, robust and deeply intelligent novel. The only novels of the Civil War that rank with it, to my knowledge, are Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and McCarthy's Blood Meridian.
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Outstanding
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The Economist
Mr Doctorow's writing here is magnificent, the details he selects unerringly trenchant.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph David Flusfeder
[Doctorow] has produced an almost entirely convincing recreation of a violent, frantic time, in which his cinematic technique of rapid, short scenes populated by crowds of characters, many of whom have their own points-of-view, works wonderfully.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Matt Thorne
The March is a stunning achievement, and deserves to repeat its American success here.
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Favorable
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The Spectator Alan Wall
A vivid sense of the morality and immorality of war informs Doctorow’s latest novel.
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Favorable
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London Review Of Books Amanda Claybaugh
The March brilliantly revises the received view of Sherman.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Jay Parini
[An] ample, poetic novel.
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray
This isn't one of those sprawling, multi-part books where everybody has a rich backstory and a neat arc to follow. The March is messy, relentless, and essentially unchanging. It begins in chaos, and ends with the chaos momentarily abated.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Edward Nawotka
With "The March," E.L. Doctorow makes a fine contribution to the Civil War bookshelf, one that offers a panoptic view of one of the most notorious military campaigns in U.S. history
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Favorable
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
It is Mr. Doctorow's achievement in these pages that in recounting Sherman's march, he manages to weld the personal and the mythic into a thrilling and poignant story.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Walter Kirn
Yes, war is hell, and ''The March'' affirms this truth, but it also says something that most war novels leave out: hell is not the end of the world.
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
While none of his characters is as indelible as Scarlett O'Hara, it is a testament to the strength of his writing that Tara never casts its shadow over The March.
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Favorable
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New York Observer Lee Siegel
Mr. Doctorow's decency might paradoxically be a mild curse on his art. But it is a blessing on the reader's humanity. [19 Sep 2005, p.18]
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Favorable
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New York Review Of Books Christopher Benfey
Like all Doctorow's work, The March is stylishly written--his model, here as elsewhere, is F. Scott Fitzgerald--but it seems, despite its considerable length, a smaller, less ambitious book than one might have expected in view of his subject.
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Favorable
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Salon Laura Miller
"The March" lacks a central consciousness for the story to constellate around. In a way, it's not quite a novel, and if you come to it expecting a novel's pleasures, you're likely to be disappointed.
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Unfavorable
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Library Journal Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.
Doctorow's fictional re-creation of the event lacks compelling characters, forceful structure, and dominant themes and so fails to make it much more than a romp in the park. [Sep 2005, p.363]
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