Wolf, perhaps best known for her "third wave" feminist work, The Beauty Myth, joins a growing number of other writers in warning that the United States is drifting into despotism and abandoning the "Founder's radical legacy." She lays out ten essential steps for undermining democracy and setting up dictatorship and presents evidence that each one of them has been happening in the United States of 2007. In order to establish a dictatorship, she argues, one has to: invoke an external and internal threat, establish secret prisons, develop a paramilitary force, surveil ordinary citizens, infiltrate citizen's groups, arbitrarily detain and release citizens, target key individuals, restrict the press, cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason," and subvert the rule of law. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)