Among the many attributes of the editor of ABR is his capacity for whimsy. (The current acting editor would like to think she shares this trait and has therefore left this bit in, believing, with Muriel Spark, that ‘the more truths and confusions the better.’) He knows full well of my own political, industrial, and academic struggles in the chill of sunny Queensland; I am, in a sense, the last person who should have been asked to review these books.

Having been set the task, however, I’ll try to look at the situation through the wrong end of a metaphorical telescope, and, thus distancing myself, I evaluate as follows.