Book Review

Smoke and Mirrors

For this assignment I read the book, “Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and The Failed Politics of Failure.”  Written by Dan Baum a writer for big time newspapers.  This book was to inform more than anything, about how bad this war is failing.  It was laid out in chapters, but also as a timeline.  For the most part I would say that this book is very credible he has a huge bibliography and has wrote for many newspapers about this topic.  

The main purpose that Dan wrote was to inform about this war that’s going on in the U.S. and how bad it is failing.  I would say that this book is very basis.  Its one sided, it doesn’t talk about any of the positive things that this war has done, not that they’re many of them.  The author made it seem that this war is the worst thing that has happened to America and that “WE” as a nation need to do something now!

Although it was written very negatively it had a very interesting structure.  This is because the way it was written was it had chapters like any other book, but it was also a timeline.  For example each chapter was a certain period of time throughout the past thirty-five years that this war has been going on.  That part of the book was interesting and unique, something I hadn’t seen before.

From what I know about this author he seems like he knows what he was talking about.  This author, Dan Baum, is a writer for many big time newspaper such as The New Yorker and The Los Angeles Times.  Another reason that I he is very credible is because he had an enormous bibliography from research that he had done in order to write this book.

Even though this topic is very interesting the style that this book was written in was extremely flat.  The author used very long sentences, and all the same length.  He had a descent word selection.  It was very text book like.  The style he wrote in was almost like a text book, boring, long, and just stated facts.  The book was written in third person, the entire book was narrative it had no dialogue what so ever.

In conclusion, the book tied in perfectly to my topic it was exactly what I need for this assignment.  The only thing that wasn’t so great about was that it didn’t show both sides of it.  Even though, it agreed with my thoughts and opinion that, this war is pointless and wasting way to much money, I would of liked for it to talk about some of the good things that this war has brought to the U.S.