I picked this book up at a used book sale a few years ago and it was sitting on my to-be-read shelf (along with so many others) until the pandemic and consequent stay-at-home orders had me finally taking a look at some of these neglected works.
Moore's now 17-year-old book written in the aftermath of 9/11 when Bush (43) was president harkens back to a kinder, gentler sort of evil - a time when we could not have imagined living in a this dystopian landscape headed by a complete incompetent. Moore pulls no punches as he points to specific examples of President Bush's poor leadership, both unintentional and willful, following the terrorist attacks in 2001.
He begins by describing the problems he had in distributing his previous book Stupid White Men in the wake of the crisis
The first 50,000 copies...came off the printing press the day before 9/11, but when tragedy struck the next morning, the trucks that would carry them to the nation's bookstores never left the loading dock. The publisher then held the books hostage for five long months-not simply out of good taste and respect (which I might have been able to understand), but out of a desire to censor me and the things I wanted to say. They insisted I rewrite up to 50 percent of the book and that I remove sections that they found offensive to our leader, Mr. Bush.
Facing the potential of having the books "pulped" if he did not acquiesce, it was a librarian, Ann Sparanese, who came to the rescue. Without benefit of Facebook (which did not exist at the time) Sparanese learned of the impending censorship and mobilized all the other librarians on her e-mail list to contact Regan books.
Fearing there would soon be a crazed mob of wild librarians storming down Fifth Avenue and surrounding the HarperCollins building...the News Corp surrendered. They dumped my book in some bookstores with no advertising, no reviews, and the offer of a three-city tour...In other words, the book was sent to the gallows for a quick painless death...within hours after the book's release, it went to number one on Amazon-and within five days it had gone to its ninth printing.
There is, not surprisingly, a lot about the USA PATRIOT Act here, and how it allows the government to access otherwise confidential information, especially where library records are concerned. Likewise Moore makes clear throughout that American citizens like and use their libraries and want the government to support them.
When I start reading a book I am always glad to find the first mention of libraries, and in this case I believed it to be in the Introduction (so early in the work the pages are numbered in lower case roman numerals). However, when I opened the book again to write this post I found that the real first time is actually even earlier than that, on the page before the title page (a place one does not usually find any writing). It contains this bit of satire
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