A new book by the playwright, director, and author David Mamet is by definition a significant literary event—but to judge from its critical reception, The Secret Knowledge is not only a bad book but possibly an evil one.
In the Los Angeles Times, David Ulin struck a similarly dismissive note, sniffing that both Mamet's latest effort and its predecessor The Wicked Son (2006) marked a precipitous comedown from the greatness of his dramas—Ulim named especially American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross. By contrast, The Secret Knowledge, in a "shift" into the "purely political realm," gives us nothing but shrill, strident polemics wholly lacking in "a spirit of dialogue and debate."
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