John Carroll: The Terror

By MARGIE THOMSON

With the anniversary of the World Trade Centre's destruction, many writers have launched into print. For sheer interest and readability, few could beat Carroll's 100-page essay. He ranges without inhibition across Western culture, picking out artefacts that help to explain his thesis of an underlying cultural and spiritual emptiness that is "crippling [westerners'] ability to respond adequately" to the threat manifested by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the movie Fight Club, our cultural transgression of the virtue of moderation, our obsession with science at the expense of other truths and the more prosaic matter of weak political leadership - all these things, and more, he lays out for us to look at. September 11 can be seen as a lightning rod, a chance for a much-needed examination of ourselves. This book deserves to be read and discussed.

Scribe

$24.95