What do novelists such as Joseph Heller, Jerry B. Jenkins, William F. Buckley Jr., Christopher Buckley and Alistair Beaton; born-again apocalypse-mongering ministers such as Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell; rappers such as dead prez, KRS-One, Paris, Talib Kweli, A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, Common, Mos Def, De La Soul, Guru, Jurassic-5, J-Live, Killah Priest, Roots, Immortal Technique, Blackalicious, Arsonists, High and Mighty, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers, Brother Ali, Common, Aceyalone, King Solomon and Roy Shivers; television writers such as Aaron Sorkin, Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and Eli Attie; and assorted politicians such as Pericles, Cleon, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Katherine Harris, Mitt Romney, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all have in common?

Peter Swirski's latest book on contemporary American literature, culture and politics provides an eloquent and erudite answer: at one point or another, all of the above have authored or at the very least authorized American political fictions. All of them, together with a supporting cast of dozens more artists and con-artists, also star or at the very least play walk-on roles in Swirski's modern version of the Satyricon, a deeply moving study of American political writing, not to say American democracy, called American Political Fictions, and pointedly subtitled War on Errorism in Contemporary American Literature, Culture, and Politics.

American Political Fictions follows in the footsteps of Peter Swirski's recent two books on contemporary American literature and culture, Ars Americana, Ars Politica (2010) and American Utopia and Social Engineering (2011), which established him as the leading scholar in that commonly overlooked category of American literature which, for lack of a better term, is usually referred to as engagé. As is evident from the back cover, American Political Fictions has already attracted an impressive array of high-calibre fans and admirers, from H. Bruce Franklin (“Swirski's combination of wicked wit and spectacular knowledge make this a dangerously fun book”) to Robert McChesney (“social and cultural criticism at its best … original, insightful, unforgettable, and almost impossible to put down”). Together with other such encomiums, they add up to the impression that this immaculately researched study sets the standard by which others will be measured.

What separates Swirski's book from other studies of American political literature is his unwavering focus on the partisan wars fought in Washington and, by proxy, by an impressive array of best-selling and in some cases mega-selling writers who, as he puts it, are only too happy to “grind their political axes” (15). The focus on popular artists who are bought, read, listened to, and viewed by tens of millions of the supposedly politically apathetic Americans is another move characteristic of Swirski, who has written a series of studies of such “nobrow” classics.

As announced in the introductory chapter, American Political Fictions wages war on errorism as it manifests itself in political humbug, cant and spin, which these days are almost synonymous with Washington. The book is divided into five chapters which alternate between history, literature and politics, surveying with “olympian detachment and intense compassion” the various portrayals of American society which, “notwithstanding invocations of democracy and liberty, seldom afford opportunity to practice them” (27). The chapters focus respectively on Joseph Heller's foray into history as a novel, Picture This; the monumental sixteen-book apocalyptic best seller The Left Behind and the publishing and merchandizing franchise it spawned in its wake; by far the funniest and the greenest American satire written by a non-American; the mostly invisible men and women of the American political rap scene; and the most political television series ever put on air in the history of American television, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The West Wing.

But there is one extra dimension that makes American Political Fictions not only a must-read, but also a fun read. This very serious, indeed at times even grave, study is also irrepressibly funny, witty, irreverent and politically incorrect: in one word, entertaining. Its seriousness of purpose is actually enhanced by a selection of political cartoons, some politically incorrect, others bleakly or uproariously funny, which accompany the narrative flow. On the negative side, the layout leaves something to be desired, with some bottom margins uncomfortably small, presumably to save space and thus paper (although, oddly enough, Palgrave inserts a number of blank pages at the very end). Be that as it may, with a sense of history of Richard Hofstadter, the journalistic pacing of David Halberstam (including personal interviews that feature in chapters 3 and 5), and the sardonic wit of Mark Twain, American Political Fictions is a book that all of the above might have written had they been literary scholars.