From the author of A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit (2006), seventeen literary-political essays ask whether Americans can remain a nation of liars (“U.S.A.—Land of Liars”) without inevitably bringing about the eternal death of the republic. “The ‘Debate’ Over 9/11” asks this question, as does “The Premeditated Murder of the United States of America.” Readers will find the question asked—and answered—in “Howard Zinn and the Tea Cozy,” “Is Dwight Garner a Dissembler, Deceiver, and Malefactor to His Nation?”, and in “Our Enemies the Left Gatekeepers” parts 1, 2, and 3. They’ll find it asked yet again, and answered, in pieces like “Amy Goodman: A Mind Prostituted,” “The Pernicious Hypocrisy of Frank Rich of the New York Times” parts 1 and 2, “Poisoned Nation, Poisoned Truth,” and in the ambitious final piece as it zeroes in on lies and emptiness in writers like Frank Rich, Dwight Garner, Rebecca Solnit, Don Delillo, and Thomas L. Friedman and asks “Can the Literary Life Exist in a Post-1984 Nation?”
In an “Appendix,” Larsen suggests 19 books as guides to what really happened on 9/11 and to an understanding of why continuing to hide from it in denial and lies will destroy the nation with certainty and forever. Of the nineteen, the one far and away most obviously important is the extraordinary achievement in scientific forensics by Dr. Judy Wood, the newly published Where Did the Towers Go? In a Foreword to Dr. Wood’s volume, Larsen writes that “The book you now hold in your hands is the most important book of the twenty-first century. . . . Where Did the Towers Go? is a work, assuming that its content and message are properly and fairly heeded, that offers a starting point from which those who genuinely want to do it can begin, first, to rein in and then, perhaps, even end the wanton criminality and destructiveness of a set of American policies that took as their justification and starting point the horrific events of September 11, 2001.”
Where Did the Towers Go? is a way out of the prison of blindness and death that is described and lamented in The Skull of Yorick.
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CLICK HERE TO READ RANDALL TILLOTSON’S REVIEW OF YORICK
CLICK HERE TO READ “Is Dwight Garner a Dissembler, Deceiver, and Malefactor to his Nation?” (AN EXCERPT FROM THE SKULL OF YORICK)
CLICK HERE TO READ “Can the Literary Life Exist in a Post-1984 Nation?” (AN EXCERPT FROM THE SKULL OF YORICK)
CLICK HERE TO READ “The Table of Contents” from THE SKULL OF YORICK
CLICK HERE TO FIND THE PAGE OF ONLINE FOOTNOTES FROM THE SKULL OF YORICK
