Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Well, wouldja look at that. As I write this, six one-star reviews, all saying exactly the same thing and missing the point in the process -- whining about how the book focuses on conservative US politics and whining about bias, while completely failing to understand how they prove the book's point. There are a few things that irk me about this book -- the near-exclusive focus on US conservatism is necessary to this book's theme, but the author would be well-served to look into things like the alternative medicine movement, which suffers from many of the same problems. (And would it have killed Pierce to include an index? I've said this in other reviews -- political books need indexes because without them it makes them look like they're trying to railroad the reader.) But to someone willing to take the time to read it, this book tells people what practically everyone should know about American politics -- that the American people are being sold a sob story about how experts are an elite that is keeping them from being The Best Damn Nation In The World. (In that regard, one should definitely read "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter -- it's over four decades old, but saw from the very beginning what has come into full bloom now with the barking lunacy of the American Right.) Pierce covers much territory -- he starts with the Creation Museum in Kentucky, then moves on into the 19th century crank Ignatius Donnelly and his popularization of Atlantis, and from there it's off to the races. The most painfully harrowing sections are those dealing with the Kitzmiller trial in Dover, PA, where a town drew up sides over good science vs. bad religion, and the Terri Schiavo controversy, where a mourning family allowed themselves to be taken advantage of by a large movement of religious fanatics so thoroughly divorced from reality that they managed to get Congress to subpoena the testimony of a brain-dead woman. The appalling and almost nihilistic arrogance of global-warming deniers rates a chapter as well, and the book even shows a surprise hero -- James Madison, a mediocre president but a genius legislator whose quiet determination was one of the main driving forces behind the writing of the Constitution. Pierce brings the snark throughout, not holding back with frustration and often-brutal humor, showing at every turn how the people he writes about confuse research for indoctrination and dissent for political bias. The main problem with this book is this: the people who are likely to read it already know most of the story, and are mostly getting background information, and the people who won't read it are like the six reviewers I mentioned in my intro -- determined to ignore its stories and insights as "bias" because their politics and faith won't let them look outside the cloister. The main value of this book, then, is to people on the fence, people in the center who are willing to learn where people get in over their heads and who are willing to admit that what they think they know may not be so.