Describing the unfolding torture of Guantanamo detainee Abu Zabaydah, Mark Danner paints a vivid portrait with unsettling bodily and material details. But this portrait is not presented simply for us to condemn; it serves to crystallize a larger political condition. Sometime on or about September 11, 2001, Danner argues, our political condition changed. The events of Zabaydah's torture were the consequence of a set of political choices that created what Danner calls "the style of the exception." That style coalesces around distinctive features that have become familiar in our-post 9/11...