The question of de Man's personal history has continued to fascinate scholars, as evidenced by Evelyn Barish's 2014 biography "The Double Life of Paul de Man". In an advance review published in "Harper's Magazine", Christine Smallwood concludes that de Man, as portrayed by Barish, was: "a slippery Mr. Ripley, a confidence man, and a hustler who embezzled, lied, forged, and arreared his way to intellectual acclaim." In response to these claims, Peter Brooks, who succeeded to de Man's post as Sterling professor at Yale, stated that some of Barish's accusations were overblown, identifying several errors in her footnotes: "One could do a review of Barish's footnotes that would cast many doubts on her scholarship". For example, he cites the footnote Barish provides to support her claim that in 1942 de Man planned to launch a Nazi literary magazine: "I shared this information, and it has since been previously published in Belgian sources not now available to me", noting that this sort of thing "does not pass any sort of muster." Harvard professor Louis Menand, on the other hand, in his review in "The New Yorker", finds Barish's biography important and credible, notwithstanding the presence of occasional errors and exaggerations. Menand writes "er book is a brief for the prosecution. But it is not a hatchet job, and she has an amazing tale to tell. In her account, all guns are smoking. There are enough to stock a miniseries."