Since I have had meaningful contact with Chabad for over forty years, I found the Heilman-Friedman book on the Rebbe to be facinating--well written and well researched--and it helped put together all kinds of things concerning the history of Chabad and the life of the Rebbe that I had guessed at, but was never really sure were true. I was therefore surprised and taken aback by the intense controversy the book has generated and I have read carefully all the reviews I could find in the mainline Jewish press and now the eighteen in Amazon--which, as of today, are oddly balanced between nine positive and nine negative points of view. What I find so striking among most of the negative one-star reviews, is the sense of scorn with which they treat the authors--as if they had an axe to grind and deliberately set out to belittle the Rebbe's name--one even refers to Heilman and Friedman as "con men." In contrast, all the five and four star reviews are thoughtful and find the book--"despite any shortcomings"--to be an illuminating experience--"humanizing" the Rebbe--which in turn, makes him a far more impressive figure than the myth-like personage depicted by so many of his followers. One of the four star reviews (Daniel B. Schwartz) says something with which I strongly agree--something that separates me from the Rebbe's worshipful Chabad followers and defenders. "Like a Greek tragic hero, the Rebbe's greatest strength, his self confidence and ambition to save the world, proved his ultimate historical downfall..." For me, at least, the Rebbe as "tragic hero," is a far more illuminating way of seeing his legacy than as the actual or erstwhile "Moshiach" that so many of his following seem to dream about.As a guide to those who'd like to delve deeper, I'd refer them to the reviews in the book's website: [...] -both positive and negative. On the negative side, if one has the patience to wade through a prodigiously footnoted forty-five page critique, look at Rabbi Chaim Rapoport's essay in the Seforim blog, along with three responses from the authors. Whatever errors the book may contain--and every first biography makes mistakes--they certainly are not the result of malice as Rapoport frequently implies. A far more interesting critical response was written by Zalman Alpert in the [...] blog. Alpert, who appears to be a knowledgeable insider/outsider, raises some important issues and contemporary developments, that he feels were left out of the book--but which I would think could be the subject of two additional volumes. Despite his criticism of any errors and omissions, he seems to be disturbed by the tone of several of the negative reviews: "This book is hardly anti-Lubavitch. I think it paints a very evenhanded portrayal of the Rebbe's life. Parts ...are clearly very favorable to the Rebbe, other parts present him as a human who was undergoing change as he got older and circumstances changed. Yet why the long negative reviews of the book? ... Clearly the chapter about the Rebbe in Berlin and Paris...does not warrant a forty page response...I think the answer is clear...these reviewers [such as Rabbis Boteach and Rapoport] would not be happy with anything less than a propaganda work about the Rebbe the like of which their own press churns out on a regular basis...that is sad because [these two reviewers] are intelligent and likeable people, yet they are caught up in the cult around the Rebbe..." I would add that the "official" or "unofficial" attack by Chabad loyalists seems to me to be seriously misguided and counter-productive, since in the end their desired "larger than life" portrait of the Rebbe, will only diminish both him and the impressive, but sometimes mixed fruits of his labor of love and attempted redemption. If they were wise, they would simply sit out the controversy, and "kvel" that two serious non- Lubavitch scholars have paid so much positive attention to their illustrious leader.Let me end by highlighting one unusual and especially brilliant review by Adam Kirsch which appeared in the on-line Tablet (July 20), entitled "American Messiah." After going over the book's contents and major thesis, Kirsch uses remarks by Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Franz Rosenzweig to highlight the paradoxical nature of messianism as a constant and central Jewish idea. He ends with quotes from Eliot Wolfson's recently published profound but dense study of the Rebbe's thought, Open Secret. This is followed by many responses to the blog, among them two long comments by Wolfson himself, further enumerating his rather startling thesis. Any first biography that can stimulate this kind of discussion is certainly worth reading, despite any revisions that the Rebbe's future biographers might choose to make.