The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy

“Remarkable… reminiscent of Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower… Rather than the story of two lone-wolf jihadists, determined to wage war on their adopted country, the marathon bombing becomes a saga of both the Tsarnaev family and contemporary U.S. culture, in which all too often terror provokes an unreasonable response… For Gessen, the issue is not guilt or innocence… more essential is what the Tsarnaevs and their story tells us about who we have become. That she makes the case with grace and passion, while also basing it on rigorous reporting, is the triumph of the book.”

— Los Angeles Times

“Straightforward and captivating.”

— Janet Napolitano, The New York Times Book Review

“Stunning piece of reporting. An instant classic.”

— Lev Grossman (via Twitter)

“A powerfully compelling portrait… Gessen is uniquely suited to tell the Tsarnaev story: She moved to Boston as a teenage Russian immigrant herself, and, as a result, her observations about what immigrants experience carry specific gravity… No book could ever fully explain why someone would choose to murder innocent people, but Gessen comes as close as we’ll ever get. Much as Truman Capote did in his classic “In Cold Blood,” Gessen offers compassion for those whose acts are most contemptible, and her explanation of what happened is as complex and as simple as it is to be human. And that is truly frightening.”

— Chicago Tribune

“A Russian-speaking immigrant in Boston, journalist Masha Gessen might be uniquely qualified to investigate Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. In The Brothers, she writes with sophistication and nuance about their family’s complicated, nomadic existence… an enthralling and illuminating read.”

— Minneapolis Star Tribune, Fave of the Week

“This is a story that no one wanted to hear in the days and months after the bombing… Many Americans still may not care to hear it, but that would be too bad, because [The Brothers] is one of the best books I’ve ever read about terrorism and the immigrant experience in America… part social history, part travelog (she traversed the Caucasus and Central Asia while reporting it), and part forensic on family and cultural dysfunction… Gessen wanders among these people, and approaches them with empathy and dark wit… a student of state and stateless terror, [she] is excellent on the varieties of fear it engenders.”

— Newsweek

“Gessen… compels us to see the story as part of a much bigger global conflict… [and] is an ideal person to contextualize much of this story, even if her conclusions make us uncomfortable… Most importantly… The Brothers relentlessly observes an overreach of power in response to the bombings… an often painful account of our system’s moral failings, the ways in which we’re inhospitable to those seeking asylum on our shores, and the ways our law enforcement acts in a manner as draconian as law enforcement was in the strife-torn places they fled. That may not be the story we’re looking for, but it is a story we very much need.”

— Flavorwire, “A Must Read Book”

“Two parts forensic anthropology, one part activism, The Brothers is a forceful… passionate exploration of the events that preceded and followed the [Boston Marathon bombing]… Gessen is at her best when she takes the reader through the Tsarnaevs’ wildly complicated social history… The origins of their story, itself dizzyingly complex, sets the stage for our understanding of the permanent state of exile and cultural confusion the Tsarnaev clan seemed to endure.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

“[Gessen’s] own background… make[s] her an ideal author for this story… her knowledge of Soviet and Russian history, and her reporting on the ground in Dagestan, Kyrgyzstan and Chechnya, lend a resonance and weight… to the Tsarnaev family’s peregrinations in that region… Gessen explains how the history of Chechnya — and the radicalism that took root there — might have affected family members, and she also brings an understanding of the dislocations often faced by immigrants to her account.”

—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“The fearless Russian-American journalist brings equal parts sympathy and skepticism to… the Tsarnaev family… fascinating and illuminating.”

— Vulture

“Gessen has done valuable work, shoe-leather reporting rather than the reflexive condemnation that flows after any murder, any attack… she is to be commended for humanizing rather than demonizing the brothers.”

— Newsday

“Gessen… paint[s] an evocative picture of the impoverished and strife-torn region the Tsarnaevs left behind, and… the Boston area community that they joined when they immigrated in the early 2000s.”

— Kansas City Star

“Meticulously researched and provocative… Gessen asks courageous questions about the dark side of the justice system, providing a vital counternarrative to the account of the bombing given by mainstream media.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

“Urgent… damning.”

— The New York Times

“[An] unflinching indictment of the most powerful man in Russia.”

— The Wall Street Journal

“Fascinating, hard-hitting reading.”

— Foreign Affairs