Butler writes with such awe, compassion, and conviction about [Kim] Stanley that despite having only seen a few of her performances, I felt deeply connected to her artistry, cheering her triumphs, empathizing with her struggles, wincing at her failures. That he achieves this effect not only in his portrayal of her but also with the cavalcade of characters both famous and forgotten in The Method is nothing short of extraordinary. Every vignette springs from the page.

Thoroughly engrossing.

The Method proved fascinating. The story of the philosophy’s growth and evolution plays out in the same manner as any good biography, with each high point explored with scholarship and thoughtfulness. A book like this could have easily read as dry and/or academic, but instead, Butler has woven his thorough research into a compelling narrative, one with heroes and villains and misunderstood figures from the nebulous middle space. All this while also producing a work of theatre history.

Engaging and meticulously researched.

It’s a remarkable tale, and Butler, a writer and podcaster for Slate who also teaches theatre history, is well cast as narrator.

Butler’s lively, well-researched and marvelously readable book isn’t just for actors, but also for anyone who loves watching them. Most in need of it is anyone who has ever announced authoritatively, at a cocktail party or anywhere else—and, sadly, my personal experience tells me these people are plentiful—that 'Method acting is when you actually become the character'.

Butler takes a meticulous, immersive approach, offering a blow-by-blow narrative of the trials, tribulations, victories, affairs, and dissolutions of a busy cast of characters and theatrical institutions. Yet the avalanche of detail can be pedantic, and the promise that he will explore the Method’s deep social ramifications mostly disappears as he traces the turmoil in and around the Moscow Art Theatre, and the enthusiastic ferment that pervaded the Group Theatre in New York.

Stanislavski’s story is expertly and exactingly told.

The theater has its allure, but one often thinks that Irving Berlin’s 'There’s No Business Like Show Business' could profit from the bracing corrective of Noël Coward’s 'Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage.' Isaac Butler’s intense, deeply researched, historically alert, well-written, eminently readable (and gossipy) The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act explores the art of acting with sufficient depth and clarity to support both positions.

Isaac Butler has packed The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, his essential history of America's hallmark acting style, with tales of political intrigue, stories of stratospheric triumphs and epic failures, and scenes of backstabbing and petulance played out by—and this should go without saying-—a first-rate cast.

An excellent, thorough history.

In this history of that movement, he traces its journey across stages and continents and introduces us to a colorful cast of actors, directors, and teachers.

[A] detailed, authoritative narrative.