ATTENTION, MOVE! THIS IS AMERICA!

Overlong, blinkered view of the bombing, ordered by Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode, of the radical organization MOVE. This book is a whitewash, omitting most of MOVE's worst slogans and offenses, substituting instead a paranoid view of American politics: ""It is certainly true that the 'white power structure' was behind the events of May 13, in the sense that power in the U.S. remains in the hands of whites who most definitely knew of and sanctioned the massacre."" But the most senseless arguments are included in several appendices featuring guest commentators. One essayist, for example, unconvincingly compares the bombing of MOVE to Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Love Canal, and Chernobyl, Most absurd, however, is Alice Walker's contribution. Although MOVE was bombed while Walker was in Paris, she nevertheless opines that MOVE's members ""were more philosophical than perfect."" The loudspeakered racist rant that filled the air of Philadelphia for months can hardly be termed ""philosophy,"" a fact that Walker seems to acknowledge when she states, ""I probably would not have been able to live next door to them for a day."" Walker's additional statement that ""every bomb ever made falls on all of us"" ignores such incidents as the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life, and her concluding poem, ""We too fucking yes sing America,"" is definitely not an improvement on the Whitman original. A failed book undermined by one-sidedness and bad taste.