It is impossible to read Mark Steyn for more than a couple of paragraphs without encountering a startling aperçu, formulated in arresting terms and usually with a felicitous wit surpassing the highest level of professional comedians and punch-liners. Whether in straight works of reportage, such as his immortal treatment of the events around the impeachment of President Clinton (“Air Force One is back in its hangar”), or more ambitious analyses such as he provides in his new book, After America, he always exposes problems with greater clarity and in starker (and more entertaining) terms than others have.1
Steyn (and I should reveal that we are friends and have often been associated with the same publications and remain so at the National Review Online) has become one of the great people in the information industry throughout the English-speaking world. He is a cult figure whose previous book, America Alone, was a bestseller and who even raises the ratings of the mighty Rush Limbaugh when he is the guest host on that radio show.
After America is in all respects a worthy sequel to America Alone. The earlier book extolled America’s heroic status as the chief and only plausible resister to the degeneration of the West and the endless primitive depredations of militant Islam, carried out with the mischievous connivance of a greedy and malevolent China. In the sequel, Steyn recounts the spectacular failure of the United States to meet that challenge. As these
