Mike Davis attacks the current fashion for empires and white men’s burdens in this blistering collection of radical essays. He skewers such contemporary idols as Mel Gibson and Howard Dean, debates with Tom Frank about “what’s the matter with America,” unlocks some secret doors in the Pentagon and the California prison system, visits Star Wars in the Arctic and vigilantes on the U.S.-Mexico border, predicts ethnic cleansing in New Orleans more than a year before Katrina, commemorates the anarchist avengers of the 1890s, remembers “Private Ivan” who defeated fascism, recalls the “teenybopper riots” on Sunset Strip, and looks at the future of global capitalism from the top of Hubbert’s Peak.