A 1651 favorable reviews, who the hell could disagree ? Well I'll try..Been working in the various college bookstores since 1968, I had a chance to read a few pages from this book. Its literary quality is not that great, the emotional harmony with the increasingly more infantile american public signals the takeover of teeagers of the public life. We all saw the results. This is the basic affect of liberalism, with no positive vision of a possible action. However, even after 9/11/01, my son is compelled by the New York State to read this second rate fiction, alongside with " The Chocolate War", "Lisa Bright and Dark" and other "pulp-fictiony" type of "STUFF".How about some Faulkner, Hemingway, Dreiser, Dos Passos, Vidal, even Zane.