The book is masterful and engrossing. It is girded by more than 40 pages of endnotes. The author and David Holley, his researcher, have performed yeoman work. They capture what made the man tick and what led to his fall from grace. Kirtzman’s critique is leavened with bittersweet impressions and references to Giuliani’s accomplishments..

The book cuts through the myth and caricature that has too often defined Giuliani.

Giuliani: The rise and tragic fall of America’s mayor, inscribes its thesis in its subtitle. The notion is that Giuliani was once truly glorious, and that his subsequent association with Trump...constitutes a betrayal of the legacy he set down as the leader of New York during one of its greatest crises.

The biography is at its sharpest when examining the lifelong synergy between Trump and Giuliani.

How did a man of unusual legal and political talents end up a beached whale of a lawyer-politician touting for lucrative business in all sorts of murky places and shilling for a discredited president seemingly bent on upending the constitution?...It’s the essential question about Giuliani, but not one that Andrew Kirtzman attempts to answer in this biography. Instead, he in essence frames him as a dangerous extremist nutjob all along...Such a characterisation is hardly fair.

... lively.

Lord help me I love a hatchet job, and you’ll have to too if you want to make it through Giuliani before donating it to Oxfam. This is not just any old biography – it’s a 480-page character assassination.

With a cinematic made-for-TV sense of scene and pacing, gossipy insider revelations, and sharp analysis, Kirtzman vibrantly depicts the sad and tawdry unraveling of Giuliani’s reputation..

Kirtzman conducted hundreds of interviews for this portrait of a polarizing man.

At times the book seems more interested in Giuliani’s troubled marriage than his estranged relationship with reality, but 'the ex-wife made him do it' defense offered by some of Giuliani’s former advisers feels like a too-convenient excuse, since after the divorce he became even more closely tied to Trump.

Richly detailed.

A sad tale, expertly told, of corruption, bad judgment, avarice, and treason..