Sleek promotional copy blurbs of this book, first published in hardback in 2003, from impressive, initial reviewers (Richard Dawkins, John Shelby, etc. etc.) promise a highly informative and dramatic read. And surely it is. To some.
Personally, I find it difficult to believe that the emerging American Taliban exists beneath every home-schooled, churchgoing suburban bedstead in the country’s vast Bible belt. But who am I to defend or respond to arguments made by polemic, diatribe and footnote-riddled soft data?
If the reader needs to confirm his or her darkest fears of American Christian fundamentalism, this is surely a must for their nightstand. It will confirm every fear, and more, with a smugness and, most ironically, a religious zeal that can only be mustered by the Far Right’s counterpart, the Far Left.
The truth, one assumes, may be found somewhere between the two, but not in this particular slender volume.