The author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums attacks the current fashion for empires and white men s burdens in this blistering collection of radical essays. He skewers contemporary idols such as Mel Gibson, Niall Ferguson, and Howard Dean; unlocks some secret doors in the Pentagon and the California prison system; visits Star Wars in the Arctic and vigilantes on the border; predicts ethnic cleansing in New Orleans more than a year before Katrina; recalls the anarchist avengers of the 1890s and teeny-bopper riots on the Sunset Strip in the 1960s; discusses the...