First off, thank you to all the followers of the Driftless Area Review. Those following via email updates, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Thank you, all 222+ of you.
I’m writing this post as a general update on all things Driftless Area Review. Besides writing reviews and essays for the Driftless Area Review, I also write reviews and essays for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. This year my themed essays focus on critically re-appraising works of erotica and pornography (The Satyricon, The Story of O, etc.). In addition, my reviewing duties have been increased. Last year, I alternated between writing a review and writing a themed essay every two weeks. CCLaP’s founder Jason Pettus has upped the ante, giving me the opportunity to write one review per week. This means getting a book read enough time in advance to formulate a cogent and interesting book review. Additional reviews means additional material for the monthly CCLaP Journal.
In addition to my reviewing at CCLaP, I also write reviews for the New York Journal of Books (NYJB). Unlike CCLaP, the NYJB has a different system of deadlines. Ideally, I work to get a book finished and the review written 24-hours before the book debuts.
If you have not seen a plethora of original posts on this blog, reviewing at two other websites is a major factor. It’s a process of getting used to rhythm of the new scheduling.
CCLaP Editing Apprenticeship
Jason has also given me the opportunity to participate in the CCLaP Editing Apprenticeship. What does that mean? In addition to reading and reviewing (see above), I’m going through slush pile submissions, giving my input. I’m also one of the many proofreaders who goes over every CCLaP title coming out this year. Finally, I am shadow editing two books (MountainFit and Sad Robot Stories).
“What is shadow editing?”
Shadow editing means I’m observing CCLaP’s editing process. Reading the correspondence between Jason, the specific senior editor assigned to the specific title, and the author. I’m also looking at the several drafts going between all parties and the comprehensive, multi-part editing process.
No Premium Theme
Last year in a similar metapost, I promised a revamp in the look for the Driftless Area Review. That never happened. At present, I don’t see the pay-off, especially as it relates to a theme I’d have to purchase. With notifications being sent out to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and new followers appearing daily, the cost-benefits equation isn’t there.
Back from Hiatus
Essays on Capital, the Art of Reviewing and The Best Sci Fi and Fantasy Movies of the 80s will be back from hiatus. I think I made a similar claim last year and, alas, it didn’t pan out. (I also had a wedding to plan, so my plate was full.) There will be some revisions. I won’t be covering The Dark Crystal for the Best Sci Fi and Fantasy Movies of the 80s. (More on why below.) I’m working on setting up individual pages for each of these themed essay series. I also have to play catch-up with the Book Review Master List. I will also modify the CCLaP page. (Again, more details below.) I will consolidate Essays on Capital, since I’m now reading Capital: Volume 3.
General call for reviewers and essayists
The Driftless Area Review still has an open call for book reviewers and essayists. Interested? Send me an email at driftlessareareview @ hotmail.com
On Being Human book
My book of themed essays, On Being Human, will be published by the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. Things are still a little nebulous right now, but more details will follow. It will be available for purchase on Amazon.com and as a free download for CCLaP.
Driftless Area Review book of reviews?
A Driftless Area Review book? I’ve thought about it and I’m going to dive in with the project. It will be a compilation of book reviews and essays from 2009 to 2012. More details will follow.
Today’s book review: Dennis Lehane and others edit “Boston Noir 2: the Classics,” bringing together a collection of Boston’s dark side, ranging from hard-boiled whodunits, out of print classics, and an excerpt from “Infinite Jest.” Says reviewer Karl Wolff: “For those unfamiliar with Greater Boston and its literary heritage, [this book] is a great place to start.”
Today at CCLaP, I review “Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Cafe,” by M. Henderson Ellis, a comedic ride through post-communist Prague with John Shirting in his quest to set up a coffee franchise. I liken it to “some madcap mashup of ‘Confederacy of Dunces’ and ‘The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.’”
The Driftless Area Review welcomes a new contributor, Jennifer Huhne. She comes from a freelancing background and has written on a number of topics.
Considering the fact that it was originally criticized for being too similar to Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica has certainly stood the test of time. It is a program that I watched when I was a child in the eighties and that my children now watch. The franchise started off in 1978, was followed by a sequel in 1980, saw a revival in 2004 and has had web series episodes released online as recently as 10th February 2013. The show features an intergalactic war between human beings and a cybernetic race called the Cylons, who are hell bent on destroying humanity. It is hardly groundbreaking in terms of its plot but perhaps clichés are what make this kind of sci-fi program entertaining. As well as managing to keep my kids and I on the edge of our seats, the program also contains a number of interesting themes. The two series that were created by Glen A. Larson have a number of Mormon Latter-Day Saint beliefs incorporated into them.
Mormon Themes
Larson was a Mormon and has included several references to his faith within the show, for example the name of the human race’s home world in Battlestar Galactica is ‘Kobol’, which is an anagram of Kolob, a planet that is mentioned in the Mormon scriptures. Marriage is referred to as ‘sealing’ in the program as well, which is a Mormon term, and there is a fictional governing body known as the Quorum of Twelve, which sounds remarkably similar to the Mormon Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. However Larson has also woven in aspects of other faiths. Several characters are named after people who appear in Greek mythology and the twelve human colonies are named after the signs of the Zodiac. As opposed to simply using the series as a vehicle to preach his own faith, Larson has intertwined elements of various different beliefs to create a patchwork quilt of mythologies.
Real Life Issues
Battlestar Galactica is similar to Star Trek in that it is part sci-fi series and part soap opera. The interaction between the characters is just as interesting as the alien races and futuristic technology and the makers have never shied away from real life issues. For example, the most recent series contains debate on issues such as human rights abuse and the threat of terrorism and episode eleven of season two sees a pregnant woman being given an electrolyte balance test to see if she has any health complications after suffering an attack that could have potentially killed her baby. Fortunately her unborn child is okay but the fact that the series deals with the potential for people to suffer real-life consequences of incidents sets it apart from other more light-hearted series. The show also deals with issues surrounding lack of medical resources, which are relevant to many parts of the world today. After considering administering individual medical tests to people in order to test to see if they are human or Cylon, medical staff decide to use a technique known as ‘group testing’, which is used in real life. Not only are real-life problems explored but real-life solutions are also presented. The show manages to include gritty, realistic plot lines whilst remaining family friendly, which is fortunate because my children love it.
Political Themes
The war that the humans in Battlestar Galactica are fighting against the Cylons contains some striking similarities to World War II. Some characters turn collaborators, some go underground and become insurgents and the Cylons’ desire to wipe a race of the map is reminiscent of the mindset of the Nazis. The fact that there is a witch-hunt for Cylon sympathizers in the later series also has echoes of McCarthyism. One of the strengths of the series is that it mirrors the real life politics of war rather than simply relying upon action to entertain the viewers. It transposes genuine moral dilemmas into a sci-fi setting, which is why it is one of my favorite sci-fi series.
The Nature of Humanity
Battlestar Galactica also questions the nature of humanity. In the 2004 series, Cyclons breed with human beings to produce hybrid offspring. The fact that they are mechanical creatures challenges whether somebody has to consist entirely of flesh and blood in order to be classed as human. The fact that Cyclons display some human emotions implies that somebody who is not considered to be fully human can still attain the morals associated with mankind. This implies that people’s personalities are not predisposed by their biology and that individuals possess the ability to rise above the limits associated with their physical forms.
Hope For Future Series
Perhaps the reason that this show has enjoyed such a high degree of longevity is that it combines religion, mythology, science and philosophy rather than relying solely upon special effects and fight scenes to maintain the viewers’ attention. It is intelligent sci-fi as opposed to sci-fi that has been created to be visually appealing without causing people to ask questions. Will there be another series at some point in the future? Judging by the popularity of the previous series and the level to which my children loved the most recent one, the answer to this will probably be ‘yes’.
Recently I reviewed Seth Kaufman’s “reality TV novel” The King of Pain over on CCLaP. We discuss literature, TV, reading, and The Jersey Shore’s responsibility for the cultural apocalypse.
What inspired you to writeThe King of Pain? Why did you write it in the format you did? (Novel chapters alternating with short stories)
Two of the central ideas to the book–a Hollywood guy stuck under his home entertainment system who is somehow involved with a book called “A History of Prisons”—came to me over twenty years ago. The image of a man pinned by his TV seemed like a good comic metaphor for a nation that is consumed by entertainment culture. As for the book title, that sprang out of me interviewing my grandfather about the 8 years he spent as a political prisoner between the wars in Poland. Only three of his anecdotes made it into The King of Pain, but the idea of imprisonment and all that comes with it–the horror of torture, of absence, of boredom, of hunger–and tricks and triumphs of surviving such conditions really stayed with me.
Years later, when Reality TV had really blown up and Dick Cheney described waterboarding as “a no-brainer,” I finally had an “Aha!” moment. I knew who the man stuck under the entertainment system was and what he did and how he got there. So I guess I should thank Dick Cheney for being such a misguided, callous jerk and for Survivor for introducing “torture-lite” TV. I began to think about torture, imprisonment and reality TV as sort of feeding off each other.
As for the alternating stories, I had this idea it would be fun. That the stories would resonate off Rick Salter’s stories about the show. And truly, stories are how we survive. They save us all. My grandfather used to tell me that he could never be bored in life because he could always close his eyes and tell himself stories. Then the idea of having a character read the stories critically seemed not only funny, but a good way to examine how we read, absorb, enjoy and even miss the point of the stories we read.
How did your background in TV journalism inform your writing process?
I think it helped me establish credibility and color with regard to Rick Salter. The fact that I can talk about some of the machinations of TV makes the whole premise of the show more believable. Mentioning insider stuff like TV Up Fronts or the annual press tour in Pasadena or the fact that these shows make contestants indemnify the producers for everything from personal injury to getting a venereal disease, helped me establish Rick as a TV executive.
Why are people simultaneously attracted to and repelled by reality shows?
Who was it that said: “To stare at train wrecks is to be human?” Oh, I guess it was me.
It is a common saw to see TV as the enemy when it comes to this nation’s literacy standards. Is there any truth to that? Or is TV an easy scape-goat, while other culprits go unnoticed?
Ultimately, I think it’s a scape-goat. It’s everywhere and can be consumed with zero effort, so passive TV watching seems dangerous, or if not dangerous, at least a massive time suck. But I think reading and literacy are honed at home. Reading is a solitary, habit-forming pursuit that is best learned from those around you: parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, friends, and of course, teachers.
Is placing certain media forms (TV, movies, radio, books, live theater, etc.) in a pre-determined hierarchy a smart and/or logical thing?
In the beginning was the word. All of those mediums start with the word. So writing and reading reign supreme in my estimation. But after that, it’s all storytelling. Although I’m not quite sure how fine arts fit into that statement.
Do you have any other projects in the works?
I have a picture book for adults coming out in February called If You Give an Architect a Contract. It’s a parody of the million selling kids book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. But it is really an examination of all the crap that can and usually does happen when you renovate anything. It is based on the collective misery of everyone I’ve ever met that has done anything to their house or apartment.
But more seriously, my next novel, which is about gambling, wealth and a fictional island in the Caribbean, is this close to being “finished.” And I have two other books in the works. I also play in a band: The Fancy Shapes. And we are supposed to record another album this year.
Who are some of your favorite authors?
So many great writers, so little time. For humor, Cervantes, A.A. Milne, Twain, Nabokov and Kyril Bonfiglioli. As for serious and not-so-serious pleasures: John Le Carre, Nicholson Baker, J. M. Coetzee, John P Marquand, Donald Westlake, Ed McBain, Graham Greene, Dorothy L. Sayers, Kate Atkinson, and Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies series, which I think owe a huge debit to Barbara Pym. I’m sure I’m leaving many, many out.
What are some of your favorite TV shows and movies?
TV: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, SpongeBob SquarePants and Sesame Street. And the brilliant britcom, The Vicar of Dibley.
Movies: His Girl Friday, Breathless, Picnic at Hanging Rock, This Is Spinal Tap, Singing in the Rain, Philadelphia Story, It Happened One Night, Team America, and everything Chaplin, Marx Brothers and Keaton. Clearly, I need to get out more.
IsThe Jersey Shorethe sign of Western culture’s imminent collapse? Or am I being alarmist?
Ha! Jersey Shore has been canceled, so Western culture will live another day. From where I sit, Snooki and the Situation are harmless compared to everything else looming over us.
Karl Wolff begins 2013 reviewing Seth Kaufman’s novel “The King of Pain,” about a reality TV producer lodged beneath his giant home entertainment system, his predicament complicated by reading a short story collection about prisons written by someone named Seth Kaufman.
A limited-run series where I review three books about the Supreme Court of the United States, exploring its historical and ideological conflicts, and the transformations it wrought upon law and society.
the body of doctrine or thought that guides an individual, social movement, institution, or group.
such a body forming a political or social program, along with the devices for putting it into operation.
theorizing of a visionary or impractical nature.
the study of the nature and origin of ideas.Category: Philosphy
a philosophical system that derives ideas exclusively from sensation.Category: Philosphy
Origin of ideology: 1790–1800; cf. F idéologie
Random House Webster’s College Dictionary
The Federalist Society: the Resurgence of the Judicial Conservatism
In the long and storied history of the United States, conservatism suffered two major blows in modern times. The first was the Great Depression and President Herbert Hoover’s intransigence. The Republican president believing that the market would right itself without heavy-handed government meddling. Hoover’s miscalculation created the groundswell for the Democratic Party’s decades long domination of the executive and legislative branches. The second major blow was the constellation of scandals known as Watergate. Whereas Hoover’s failure to act discredited the economic foundation of conservatism (laissez faire capitalism), Watergate exposed a corruption and moral sickness at the epicenter of the executive branch. The constitutional crisis and Nixon’s authoritarian paranoia made the party of Law and Order seem comically hypocritical. (Understandably, there are multiple causes and multiple interpretations one can find in explaining both the Great Depression and Watergate. But the point of this essay is to underscore how the ordinary American citizen comprehended these crises.) Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine highlights the conservative comeback and how a grassroots movement worked towards creating a comprehensive plan to take back the judiciary. In addition, the conservative comeback can be further understood by the in-depth investigation of the Burger Court and its ideological turf battles as chronicled in The Brethren.
The groundwork for the conservative comeback occurred with the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian think tank devoted to judicial issues. Toobin illustrates the agendas of the Right and Left in very practical terms. In 1982 the Federalist Society galvanized young conservatives into action, while the Left became preoccupied with Comparative Legal Studies. The difference is striking. Reeling from the double-punch of a discredited economic system and the morally questionable actions of President Nixon, conservatives sought one thing: power. As opposed to the armchair discussions and morally self-righteous complacency of Comparative Legal Studies, the Right is to be commended for its program and its call to action. Like it or not, results only occur when power is attained, be in the legislature, the Oval Office, or the judge’s bench. One can have a comprehensive ideological outlook and sensible solutions to social problems, but if one isn’t connected to those with power, then it is rather pointless. One can have demonstrations and petitions and eloquent public speeches, but if one can’t change the laws one is protesting, what are you doing out there?
The clarion call of overturning Roe and the Federalist Society’s agenda of limited government created a formidable opposition to the entrenched Democratic establishment. Following the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, the Age of Reagan allowed for a full-on assault of political liberalism in both economic and social spheres. In terms of the public’s imagination, Reagan pushed back against the onslaught of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” turned into “Government is the problem not the solution.”
The Brethren sums up the conservative position in this brief description of Justice Rehnquist:
And they [the liberals on the Court] when Rehnquist began promptly to live up to his advance billing as a solid conservative vote, siding invariably with the prosecution in criminal cases, with businesses in antitrust cases, with employers in labor cases and with the government in speech cases.
Through Nixon, Ford, and Reagan presidencies, the Right had created a political atmosphere conducive to nominating conservatives to the judiciary. Once ensconced on these benches, it provided future opportunities for nominations and promotions. The Federal judiciary became a minefield for any case involving liberal causes.
MARTIN: It’s a revolution in Washington, Joe. We have a new agenda and finally a real leader. They got back the Senate but we have the courts. By the nineties the Supreme Court will be block-solid Republican appointees, and the Federal bench – Republican judges like land mines, everywhere, everywhere they turn. Affirmative action? Take it to court. Boom! Land mine. And we’ll get our way on just about everything: abortion, defense, Central America, family values, a live investment culture. We have the White House locked till the year 2000. And beyond. A permanent fix on the Oval Office? It’s possible. By ’92 we’ll have the Senate back, and in ten years the South is going to give us the House. It’s really the end of Liberalism. The end of New Deal Socialism. The end of ipso facto secular humanism. The dawning of a genuine American political personality. Modeled on Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches Tony Kushner
And the key to landing conservative justices in these positions was the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Dune Buggy Driver: Where’s the damn race? Duke: Beats me. We’re just good patriotic Americans like yourself. Dune Buggy Driver: What outfit you guys with? Duke: The sporting press. We’re friendlies. Hired geeks.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998, Terry Gilliam)
The Senate Judiciary Committee: Fulcrum of Democracy
There are few places in our government where all three branches converge. One of them is the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s importance cannot be underestimated. The committee plays the role of advise and consent on the President’s nominees for judicial posts, most importantly those of the Supreme Court. It is the greatest manifestation of checks and balances between branches. The importance can be seen in what is at stake for all involved. For the President, successfully nominating a candidate for Supreme Court will allow the President to have influence when his or her term or terms is up. (One can see this is the liberal legacy of FDR’s appointees.) For the Senate, it is a chance to wield its power. They are a guaranteed stopgap against executive overreach. The Senate fought back when FDR pursued his ill-fated Court Packing scheme. Added to this political calculus is the nature of the Supreme Court position itself. First, these are lifetime appointments. (Unlike, say, the Federal Reserve Chairman who needs to be appointed and re-elected to the position.) The lifetime appointment is coupled with the microscopic nature of the Supreme Court. Unlike the 535 Representatives in Congress and the 100 in the Senate, there are only nine Supreme Court justices. Congressional appearance fluctuates with the attitude of the electorate. The Supreme Court is (allegedly) immune from the winds of public opinion and popular electioneering. The Nine chronicles the longest period without a change in the Supreme Court’s make-up (1994 – 2005).
In recent years, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings for Supreme Court nominees have been televised, turning the TV-watching populace into amateur Court watchers. Newspapers, magazines, and more recently the Internet become abuzz with speculation, hysteria, and analysis. Nominees are confirmed, others denied. Over the past decades, the hearings have taken on a different pallor. Instead of denying nominees for being too conservative, nominees have been denied for not being conservative enough. Hence, the Senate Judiciary Committee becomes a kind of ideological litmus test. The slow transition from a liberal-leaning Supreme Court to a more conservative-leaning Supreme Court has taken decades. This has also changed the mindset of the electorate, the Congress, and politicians. The events of 9/11 cemented a rightward tilt in the populace, at least until the economic meltdown of 2009, again putting the free market fundamentalists on notice.
Toobin, to his credit, illustrates the importance of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the rightward tilt of the judiciary throughout the Seventies and Eighties. But he seems to put to much emphasis on ideology alone. Because the Supreme Court is such a small government body, demographics also plays a key role. The Supreme Court will always be a body given to firsts. Amidst the recently confirmed nominees, the Supreme Court has seen its first female Hispanic justice. And now the Supreme Court has a majority of Catholic justices. Now there are six, instead of three. This has given the secular-minded pause. Alas, anti-Catholic hysteria has followed these nominations, especially in more extremist circles.
The Court’s nominal Catholicism should not be caricatured. While it is too early to tell what the judicial philosophy of the newer Catholic appointees will be like, one shouldn’t characterize the Catholic justices as a religious monolith. There are left-leaning Catholics (Sotomayor) and right-leaning (Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy). So let’s play the demographics game: Scalia, Thomas, and Alito form a solid conservative bloc. Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg are women. Kagan, Ginsburg, and Breyer are Jewish. And Kennedy, Breyer, and Souter are reliable swing votes. The best way to comprehend the votes of the Court is to consider not just ideology, but the race, sex, and religion of the nine justices.
Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets.
Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock (Pilot episode)
The Trouble with Clarence Thomas: the Contradictions of Modern Conservatism
Like it or not, Justice Clarence Thomas may be the most fascinating personality on the Court. Catholic, African-American, Southern, ultraconservative, and a bit of a porn aficionado. His complex profile is on par with the late Reverend Peter J. Gomes, a gay black Republican Baptist who was Harvard’s Dean of Divinity. Gomes and Thomas represent challenging personalities, one not easy to wrap the mind around. Thomas is erudite, passionate, an ideological firebrand, an extremist, and, most recently, totally silent on the bench.
Nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate to replace the vacant seat of Justice Thurgood Marshall, Thomas appeared as the polar opposite of Marshall. Ironically, it is these ultraconservative values that make him such a contradictory figure. Thomas adamantly opposes affirmative action, yet his entire career has been based on its tenets. A devout Roman Catholic and crusader for family values, his nomination was one of the most controversial in decades. Amidst allegations of sexual harassment and of renting porn videos, his nomination was confirmed. Added to this rather curious interpretation and practice of Catholicism, he is a die-hard advocate of free market capitalism. In addition, in speaking engagements, Thomas has repeatedly mentioned his disgust at “the elites,” the wonderful catch-all term beloved to Right and Left. It is ironic, since Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice, is a member of one of the most elite institutions in the United States government. It seems his high position and ideological extremism has made him immune to such obvious ironies. Toobin pointed out how Thomas would have his clerks watch The Fountainhead, the film based on the “philosophy” of atheist Ayn Rand.
While Thomas and Scalia are darlings to the Right, their ideological extremism makes them only so useful in the decision-making process of the Court. In the operations of the Court, strong decisions happen when there is a consensus (Brown v Board, Nixon v U.S.). Divided opinions are more contentious (Roe v Wade, Bush v Gore). In the end, an agenda must be taken: remain faithful to one’s ideological base or get things done. Chief Justice Roberts has now received the ire of the Tea Party because of his consensus-building activities on the bench. But in the end, the Supreme Court, like all political entities, derives its prestige not from passing arbitrary ideological purity tests, but from getting results. The words of the fictionalized Roy Cohn seem apt, “You want to be Nice, or you want to be Effective? Make the law, or subject to it. Choose.”
Ideology provides a comprehensive philosophical framework for political action and social change, but without those in power getting their hands dirty it remains useless, a bauble, a hobby, a passing fancy.
Espresso-sized book reviews for readers on the go.
Deconstructing Organized Crime: a historical and theoretical study, by Joseph L. Albini and Jeffrey Scott McIllwain offers a fascinating look into how organized crime is prosecuted and defined in a post-9/11 world. Despite being an academic text aimed at those in law enforcement studies, the book is highly readable. Deconstructing opens with an in-depth analysis of what it terms “the Mafia Mystique,” a cultural construct created by the media and politicians to characterize Italian-American organized crime as a massive, nationwide, all-powerful, and secretive cabal. Two Congressional committees were instrumental in creating the Mafia Mystique, the Kefauver Committee (1950-51) and the McClellan Committee (1963). By contrast, Albini and McIllwain depict Italian and Italian-American organized crime as more dependent on patron-client relationships than a secretive heirarchy.
The book also lays out how organized crime operates on a day-to-day basis. It describes the operations of numbers, book making, and illegal gambling. This lays the foundation for their comparative study of law enforcement practices in Russia and Las Vegas. In the latter, since gambling was legalized, organized crime transitioned from gambling to skimming casino earnings. The authors also criticize the heavy-handed tactics of the Las Vegas Black Book strategy. With the public ceremonies originally intended to deter organized criminals, it came off as a sensationalized means to stereotype Italian-Americans as members of a criminal element.
The readability gets temporarily derailed in Albini and McIllwain’s investigation of globalization’s impact on organized crime, the challenge being how to properly describe the process of globalization, since it is a process still in development. After some theoretical groundwork, they proceed into important discussions on organized crime’s links with human trafficking and international terrorism. The latter feeds into their innovative discussion of the “organized crime continuum.” They lay out four broad, occasionally overlapping, categories of organized crime: political-social, mercenary, in-group, and syndicated organized crime.
In the end, the book proves useful for those searching for a more intellectually rigorous approach to organized crime. Make no mistake, this book has a catch-all approach that covers many topics and lacks depth in specific areas. It covers areas like Colombia, the former Soviet Union, and the United States, but can be a handy resource when reading about Sri Lanka’s battle with the Tamil Tigers, an organization that encompassed both political and criminal elements. The book succeeds, not in denying that organized crime exists, but in how one perceives criminal behavior.
