Synopses & Reviews
Gore Vidal's commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 was deemed not publishable in the United States. His Italian publisher issued this book a few months ago, which became an instant #1 best seller there. German, French, Spanish, Portugese, and other editions are soon to be published.
Two dates are apt to be remembered for longer than usual in the United States of Amnesia: September 11, 2001 when Osama bin Laden and his Islamic terrorist organization struck at Manhattan and the Pentagon, and April 19, 1995 when Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 innocent men, women, and children. Why did they do these deeds? McVeigh was a crazed monster the media said. And Osama? The Pentagon Junta programmed their president to tell us that bin Laden was an "evil-doer" who envied us our goodness and wealth and freedom.
None of these explanations made much sense but our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own. That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with.
We consumers don't need to be told the why of anything. Certainly those of us who are in the why-business have a difficult time in getting through the corporate-sponsored American media, so I thought it useful to describe here the various provocations on our side that drove both bin Laden and McVeigh to such terrible acts.
Review
"In an essay that focuses on Sept. 11, Vidal, in eloquent, sharp-witted, and knowledgeable prose, ruminates on the causes and consequences of the terrorist attacks orchestrated by Osama Bin Laden." Diego Ribadeneira,
The Boston Globe
Synopsis
The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of "evil-doers?" "Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age." Washington Post "Our greatest living man of letters."Boston Globe "Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe."Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books