Gallagher writes that "Marele șoc" "was ready to depict Ion Iliescu as an enlightened leader who, despite some flaws, had been instrumental in consolidating Romanian democracy", and that the volume, which he called "one of the strangest books to emerge from the Romanian transition", did not include, to Iliescu's advantage, any mentions of the controversial aspects of his presidency ("any serious enquiries about the mineriads, the manipulation of nationalism, the denigration of the historic parties National Peasants' Party and the National Liberal Party, civic movements and the monarchy, the explosion of corruption, or indeed the continuing political influence and fabulous wealth of the heirs of the pre-1989 intelligence service"). In addition, he wrote that, in agreeing to interview Iliescu, Vladimir Tismăneanu had come to contradict his own assessment of the post-Revolution regime, which he had earlier defined as "of a populist, corporatist and semi-fascist type". In contrast to this assessment, Ion Bogdan Lefter challenged that Tismăneanu had taken "unnecessary precautions" in stating his bias during the dialogue with Iliescu, given that the latter was "at the end of his political career", and stresses that the interviewer had preserved "a researcher's perspective" throughout the conversation. Also according to Lefter, the interest of the book does not reside with Iliescu's views on politics, which express "the already familiar 'official' version, formulated in his hardly bearable 'wooden tongue' ", but in his recollections of childhood and youth.