...[an] engaging, bracing, and moving new book.

Baker’s effort to share his extensive knowledge has resulted in an awe-inspiring quest that reads like an adventure, a war story, and a scientific mystery of psychological suspense rolled into on. He uses a diary format, with daily entries from March 9 through May 18, 2019, that typically begin with brief asides about Baker’s beloved dogs or the mundane household chores he undertakes before launching, once again, into the world of biological warfare and his country’s ongoing attempts to hide its secrets. This approach proves to be an inspired choice as Baker’s formidable narrative skill and tenacity provide for a thoroughly riveting account and powerful testimony to the need for truth..

Unfortunately, [Baker] only adds to the ball of confusion that is our world today.

Baseless: My Search For Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act has a promising concept, which is to use the topic as a way to examine the shortcomings of America's public records law. The book does not deliver on that promise.

'Redaction,' writes Mr. Baker, 'is a form of psychological warfare directed against historians and journalists.' You don’t have to embrace his hyperbole to feel his pain.

Baker’s disillusionment is built into his book’s structure. Its chapters are diary entries written through the spring of 2019 that catalogue the scraps of knowledge he gleaned and his tussles with the FOIA infrastructure to get them. This format isn’t so much a sustained argument about America’s history of biological warfare as it is a real-life version of Groundhog Day; the book follows a circadian rhythm of file requests, denials, archive visits and attempts at dot-connecting, punctuated by dog walks and Baker’s puttering around his Maine home.

... a genre-transforming blend of history and memoir, offering behind-the-scenes glimpses of Baker’s research efforts, his home life and his worst fears about his own country. That makes Baseless essential reading for anyone trying to grapple with the role of the U.S. in global affairs since the end of World War II.

The master feeling-tone Baseless evokes is horror.

Structured as a series of diary entries in which he tells us what he knows for sure about American bioweapons efforts in that era, Baseless allows Baker to highlight that the government is still actively hiding things all these years later and to speculate about what they may be. At the same time, he tries to capture the frustration of growing older as the government runs out the clock on disclosing its secrets while they might still matter to anyone living.

...ever articulate and witty.

America’s biological warfare programs are the focus of epic struggles for transparency in this mordant exposé.