Dinesh D’Souza was an early editor of The Dartmouth Review, the conservative student newspaper. He earned a reputation as an enfant terrible before he graduated from college. In his tenure at the Review, D’Souza brilliantly tormented the liberal college administration that presented him with the perfect target. Whatever his earlier attainments, he established himself as a writer of substance with his 1991 book Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, a critique of political correctness and multiculturalism. Intensely reported, the book was full of astute commentary and analysis. It justly won the applause of such knowledgeable observers as the eminent historian Eugene Genovese, who celebrated the book in a New Republic cover story.

In his subsequent career as an author and controversialist, D’Souza has followed the path he started down in Illiberal Education. If he has sought to provoke, he has also sought to illuminate. Thus in his 1995 book The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society, D’Souza ably summarized a massive body of scholarship and literature. While there was much to disagree with in the book, he presented the evidence in such a way that an intelligent reader could both learn from him and form his own opinions.

The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11—D’Souza’s new book—is something else entirely.[1] The book works a strange metamorphosis. Whereas Illiberal Education and The End of Racismproved D’Souza a precocious commentator