I think Stitch is brilliant.... No one that I know has handled Americans abroad with a directness and an urgency that leaves the picture cleansed of any travel-book fuzz. - John Cheever; ""The fluency of the book is superb - a shorthand full of grace, immediately communicating a great many feelings and meanings. What James more elaborately was doing when people still had patience with the elaborate.... It's a very fine thing."" - Saul Bellow; ""Stitch tells the truth, and of course, more than the truth. The emotion is fully there.... Stern's best book."" - Bernard Malamud; ""Stern's best so far; and his best is so beautifully damn good.... I cared for its sorrows, and for its austere and skeptical morale."" - Howard Nemerov