“The most profane, hilarious, and insightful book I’ve read in quite a while.” — BEN SHAPIRO
“Kevin Williamson’s gonzo merger of polemic, autobiography, and batsh*t craziness is totally brilliant.” — JOHN PODHORETZ, Commentary
“Ideological minorities – including the smallest minority, the individual – can get trampled by the unity stampede (as my friend Kevin Williamson masterfully elucidates in his new book, The Smallest Minority).” — JONAH GOLDBERG
“The Smallest Minority is the perfect antidote to our heedless age of populist politics. It is a book unafraid to tell the people that they’re awful.” — NATIONAL REVIEW
“Williamson is blistering and irreverent, stepping without doubt on more than a few toes—but, then again, that’s kind of the point.” — THE NEW CRITERION
“Stylish, unrestrained, and straight from the mind of a pissed-off genius.” — THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON
Kevin Williamson is “shocking and brutal” (RUTH MARCUS, Washington Post), “a total jack**s” (WILL SALETAN, Slate), and “totally reprehensible” (PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times).
Reader beware: Kevin D. Williamson—the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle—comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.”
The Smallest Minority is by no means a memoir, though Williamson does reflect on that “tawdry little episode” with The Atlantic in which he became all-too-intimately acquainted with mob outrage and the forces of tribalism.
Rather, this book is a dizzying tour through a world you’ll be horrified to recognize as your own. With biting appraisals of social media (“an economy of Willy Lomans,” political hustlers (“that certain kind of man or woman…who will kiss the collective ass of the mob”), journalists (“a contemptible union of neediness and arrogance”) and identity politics (“identity is more accessible than policy, which requires effort”), The Smallest Minority is a defiant, funny, and terrifyingly insightful book about what we human beings have done to ourselves.
Important and entertaining: Book of the year. The Smallest Minority is an astonishing, exhilarating read. I have never read anything quite like it. On the one hand it is a modern âPolitics and English Languageâ, demonstrating how the corruption of language has lead to the corruption of thought. But this book is more important: Itâs a slap in face to all of us who have been cowering under the shade of the collective. Williamson, through what he writes and how he writes is reminding us of our humanity, of the strength and beauty that is each…
Actually, four and a half stars. This is an interesting and challenging book. It argues that democracy (particularly in its more militant forms) is the enemy of the individual (i.e. individualist) and that we need a great deal more individualism, particularly in an era of mob politics fueled by social media.KDW exemplifies this individualism; in part the book is a response to his being fired by the ATLANTIC because of his pro-life views. That individualism (for those who are not yet familiar with his work) is…
The Individual Versus the Mob Kevin Williamson is not afraid of overpowering people with his strong personality, either in person or in print. This book is an irreverent overview of social media and the ways that they enable a mob to stamp out independent thinking.His strongest case in point was his sacking by The Atlantic practically the day that he was hired as a writer for the magazine. As Jonah Goldberg of the National Review put it, at issue was his unwillingness to recant or apologize over a tweet. The…