The book review that isn't

For those interested in the work of Lysander Spooner, the October 2010 issue of Reason Magazine is worth consulting. There one will find a 'review' article by Damon Root, an article intriguingly and provocatively titled "Clarence Thomas' Favorite Anarchist: The radical anti-statism of Lysander Spooner"

At first glance, one might think that this is a book review of Steve Shone's Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist. After all, that is what the article says it is. Unfortunately, Root hardly mentions this book, and fails to tackle the work's major shortcomings (something which I am currently in the process of doing).

To be sure, in recent years Spooner's visibility has definitely increased, and Root, to his credit, summarizes some of Lysander's major works and arguments. However, anyone seriously interested in Spooner's work is cautioned to expect a degree of intellectual dissatisfaction at both Shone's book and Root's review, and to find in these works the major problem that is associated with many of the aforementioned attempts to make more people aware of Spooner. This is the problem of selective quotations. Spooner's works fill 6 volumes. Even though he longed for his work to be taken seriously, there can be no doubt that he would now cringe at the propensity of commentators to cherrypick his arguments for their own sake.

This is not to say that Root's review, and Shone's book, are entirely guilty of this (or that Spooner did not sometimes make the best use of the material that best supported his views), but readers of these works should be forewarned not to expect arguments laid out with the "irresistible clearness" of which Spooner was so fond.