From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Is history reliable? Can experience be anything but subjective? Are bias and prejudice always present? These questions, and dozens of others, get tossed around in Mark Binelli’s utterly fascinating debut [in which he] reinvents a story of racial and social prejudice into a careening trip through vaudeville, screen comedy and the nuts and bolts of the perfect pie fight… The brilliance of Binelli’s narrative is in the posing of such difficult and troubling questions in the guise of an effortless, imaginative show-biz biography…. Both playful and profound, Binelli subverts the structure of his work so that the journey through the narrative feels increasingly like the anarchy of its real-life figures…. A brave, heady and hilarious ride.”
— Greg Changnon
From the Los Angeles Times:

“Mark Binelli considers what history might have missed in his hysterically funny first novel… Instead of trotting out the infamous executionees for political grandstanding, Binelli re-imagines the duo as slapstick comedians à la Stan and Ollie… The conceit works extremely well, not only as an entertaining exercise in alternative history but also as a contemplation of comedy, ethnic definition and friendship… The novel’s purposely disjunctive structure complements Binelli’s robust sense of history; we catch small glimpses of the real Sacco and Vanzetti in the book’s funhouse mix of fictional newsreels, movie magazine interviews and historical interludes…The results can be as dizzying as a Mack Sennett Keystone comedy, but the book’s rollicking pace and even its touching moments and deeper implications — how do we really know anyone? — find ample breathing room in Binelli’s shimmery postmodern stylings.”
— Mark S. Luce