Three writers have previously written complete or partial biographies of Bruce. All have had some value, but none has been adequate, and historians have long been conscious of an important gap in Australia's political history. David Lee has filled that gap with a biography that is likely to remain a standard work for many years.

- Australian Book Review,

‘The great strength of this book is the successful way Lee has compressed such a rich and diverse life into a relatively short account. The research is thorough but the pace never slackens... one of the best single volume biographies written of an Australian Prime Minister.'

- The Australian Journal of Politics and History,

David Lee’s biography of Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce (1883-1967) has been reviewed and discussed in online media, in the daily press and in scholarly journals... Lee’s book has coincided with an expansive interplay of writing and researching on contemporary issues that also preoccupied Bruce. These include the implications of international investment and trade for unequal distributions of wealth between nations; the struggles between trade unions and employers over the regulation of the labour market; the roles of politicians and economists in the battles between neo-classical, monetarist and Keynesian ideas; and the historical lessons from the 1930s for sustained recovery from the global financial crisis.

- Kosmas Tsokhas, Journal of Australian Political Economy