Book Reviews
Go To Hopkins & Company Homepage	Go to Executive Times Archives Go to Book Review List
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated by Gore Vidal Rating: ••• (Recommended)
Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com
The Other Side of the Pancake Whether you agree or disagree with what Gore Vidal has to say in his new book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, you’re likely to come away from the book disturbed and agitated. Don’t expect Vidal to win any awards for this short (160p) paperback. A chunk of the book assembles essays previously published. Here’s an excerpt from the end of a November 1988 Vanity Fair essay: “For Timothy McVeigh, the ATF became the symbol of oppression and murder. Since he was now suffering from an exaggerated sense of justice, not a common American trait, he went to war pretty much on his own, and ended up slaughtering more innocents than the Feds had at Waco. Did he know what he was doing when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City because it contained the hated bureau? McVeigh remained silent throughout his trial. Finally, as he was about to be sentenced, the court asked him if he would like to speak. He did. He rose and said, ‘I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, “Our government is the patient, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”’ Then McVeigh was sentenced to death by the government. Those present were deeply confused by McVeigh’s quotation. How could the Devil quote so saintly a judge? I suspect he did it in the same spirit that Iago answered Othello when he asked why he had done what he had done: ‘Demand me nothing: that you know you know: from this time forth I will never speak another word.” Now we know, too: or as my grandfather used to say back in Oklahoma, ‘Every pancake has two sides.’” To read more about the side of the pancake that’s cooked differently from current United States policies, read Gore Vidal’s Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. You may come away from the book thinking about issues in new ways. Steve Hopkins, July 10, 2002
ã 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the August 2002 issue of Executive Times For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com www.hopkinsandcompany.com