The secret knowledge : on the dismantling of American culture / David Mamet.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The political impulse -- The American reality -- Culture, school shootings, the audience, and the elevator -- Alcatraz -- Lost horizon -- The Music Man -- Choice -- The Red Sea -- Chicago -- Milton Friedman explained -- What is "diversity"? -- The Monty Hall problem and the contractor -- Maxwell Street -- R100 -- The intelligent person's guide to socialism and anti-Semitism -- The victim -- Puritans -- The noble savage -- Adventure slumming -- Cabinet spiritualism and the car czar -- Rumpelstiltskin -- My father, Al Sharpton, and the designated criminal -- Greed -- Arrested development -- Oakton Manor and Camp Kawaga -- Feminism -- The Ashkenazis -- Some personal history -- The family -- Naturally evolved institutions -- Breatharian -- The street sweeper and the surgeon, or Marxism examined -- Self-evident truth -- Hope and change -- The small refrigerator -- Bumper stickers -- Late revelations -- Who does one think he is? -- The secret knowledge.

For the past thirty years, David Mamet has been a controversial and defining force in theater and film, championing the most cherished liberal values along the way. His characters have explored the ethics of the business world, embodied the struggles of the oppressed, and faced the flaws of the capitalist system. But in recent years Mamet has had a change of heart. He realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical, flawed worldview. In 2008 he wrote a controversial op-ed for The Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal,'" in which he methodically eviscerated liberal beliefs. Now he goes much deeper, employing his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political and cultural issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming.--From publisher description.