Stanley Crouch reviews Backstory in Blue in Harper's Magazine

"What makes John Fass Morton's Backstory in Blue so impressive is the way he handles the tensions and releases of that blue containment tale while bringing human complexity to the fore. We feel the flesh-and-blood qualities of the characters who made the story intimate, secret, public, intricate, casual, and even slightly mysterious. Morton reveals many things that others have missed, and his book could inspire those in our firmly segregated literary world where almost all of our fiction fails to bring artistry and the sort of sweep expected in the best nineteenth-century European novels and short stories. Page by page this book makes its way to great importance by showing that one should not be spooked by the range and complications of humanity that appear across the classes, the races, the religions, the professions, and the causes that usually drive great public events in our nation. In all, Backstory in Blue gives us a startlingly pure rendition of the private, public, domestic, and international significance of the American community in what may be an era that will more perfectly realize the deeper meanings of why the new president of the United States proudly calls himself a mutt."
--Stanley Crouch, Harper's Magazine

The June 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine is on newsstands now.