Shadowlands Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff

Strikingly empathetic . . . [Shadowlands] is that rare beast these days--a chronicle of and a meditation on an intensely politicized affair that delves beneath merely partisan concerns to touch its subject's absurd and tragic heart. As such, it's a work of almost foolish courage. . . . Scene by scene and act by act, in a range of literary registers that moves from the lyrical to the satirical, from theory-laced deconstruction to meat-and-potatoes reportage, he tells the tale of doomed, homemade rebellion against a force much larger than bureaucracy: the meaning-destroying, resource-gulping juggernaut of capitalist economics.