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blogs, and fake news studios across the country. But, more broadly, it might have hurt Gore more than it helped him. The retort may have struck many Americans, especially those Gore may have hoped to win over with the use of religious idiom, as a tasteless and unpresidential cheap shot (i.e., activating some very undesirable emotional associations). Nonetheless, though readers may quibble with specic recommendations, there is no question the inclusion of concrete advice is a net strength for the book. By observing the principles applied in construction as well as critique, readers are likely to come away with a better understanding of the argument. Moreover, the thought exercises enable Westen to habituate readers to his way of thinking about political messages. In sum, The Political Brain is a provocative mix of scientic lecture and partisan advice. Its primary audience is politicians, activists, and other interested observers. Because Westen yearns for political change, he has written a book with greater potential for impact (and sales) than academically oriented volumes. Even so, scholars have more than one reason to take a closer look. First, instructors may nd the book useful for college courses on political psychology, political communication, or elections and campaigns. The writing is accessible and engaging, yet rests on a foundation of science. Thus, it could prove an effective point of departure for class discussions. One frustrating downside, however, is that readers must go to a website to nd bibliographic notes. Ostensibly this allows hyperlinks, but none were apparent. Second, political psychologists and other scholars will nd Westens vision of why political rhetoric succeeds or fails thought-provoking. It should inspire future research and debate. Finally, though there is little new science between its covers, the book whets readers appetites for a series of published and unpublished papers, where they can learn the full details about Westens own exciting research into the political brain. Ted Brader University of Michigan

Testimony after Catastrophe: Narrating the Traumas of Political Violence. By Stevan Weine. Northwestern University Press: Evanston, Illinois. 2006. pp xxiii, 121. Testimony after Catastrophe: Narrating the Traumas of Political Violence consists of two major parts. Part I, Testimonies in Four Spaces, includes chapters on testimony from victims of torture, the Holocaust, wartime Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Part II investigates Testimony as Dialogic Work. It begins with a chapter on the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and his relevance to interpreting the testimonies. Subsequent chapters center on consequences of the testimony in terms of relieving suffering, creating cultures of peace and reconciliation, and documenting histories.

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In Part I, participants show a number of concerns. After their dehumanizing experiences, they wish to be agents in their own lives reasserting their identities as subjects, not objects. They are witnesses, hoping to preserve the memory of what happened to them in the past, to use it to do some good in the future, and to expose and shame the perpetrators publicly, if not bring them to legal justice. Their professional interlocutors also have an agenda. They would like to use their psychological knowledge and skill for therapeutic purposes. They also wish to make a social contribution, build scientic knowledge, and also, of course, advance their careers in their eld. Publish or perish is too narrow a doctrine for the practitioners, perish or publish too disrespectful to the subjects, but both groups do want the stories in the public domain. A discussion of Bakhtins work begins Part II and theoretically frames the rest of the books material. Weine believes that Bakhtins concepts of polyphony, dialogism, and unnalizability offer a new and constructive approach to the subjects of his own work. In Weines formulation, we approach the testimonies as a multitude of voices interacting with no predetermined result. The voices speak and listen to one another openly and responsively. Events are multipotent, energizing further action, but with no determined outcome (p. 92). The rest of Part II examines some of the testimonies effects from this perspective. One of the most important effects would be to relieve suffering. Weine suggests that personal catastrophes are a part of life experience, not the end of it. Mental health professionals can help individuals to incorporate their personal catastrophes into new mindsets. In testimony, Weine says, the survivor works with a receiver to create a story that, in Bakhtins terms, is a polyphonic and dialogic narrative, offering the survivor potential for growth in consciousness and ethics in regard to his or her experience of political violence (p. 95). Weine also suggests that the catastrophes can be integrated into wider interpretive frameworks, possibly cultures of peace and reconciliation. At the same time, Weine notes that the social effects of catastrophic narratives can be negative as well as positive. Processes of peace and reconciliation are not viewed positively by all participants. He quotes the South African writer Breytan Breytanbach, who wrote of the inquisition called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. . . . Misery and devastation and iniquity and treachery are staged before a bench of the pure and beamed into the living rooms of the populace. So that memory can be excavated, shaped, initiated and corrected where needed to serve as backbone to the new history of the new nation (p. 142). Further, Weine says that, in the state of Israel, the narratives written about and from Holocaust memories have contributed to a hardening of attitudes toward the Palestinians, and have led away from peace and reconciliation and toward confrontation and violence (p. 127). Weine emphasizes that simply producing testimonies will not achieve peace and reconciliation any more than simply producing testimonies will lead to healing. Rather, testimonies introduce a potent new centrifugal energy source into a culture

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that that may induce changes that could promote peace and reconciliation. . . . Testimony creates options, not solutions (p. 140). Documenting histories is an important dimension of creating both individual and collective worlds of meaning. Individuals who have survived catastrophe have a chance, through their testimony, to be authors of their own stories, narrating the past, if not rewriting it. They can now speak with their own voices and at last be heard. They become authoritative recorders and interpreters of their individual life experiences and their collective lifeworlds. They may have been victims, but they can now become heroes in the collective narrative, the myth, that emerges from the ashes. This book, like many good books, raises at least as many questions as it answers. The author and the testiers hope that some good will come of their experiences. The author wrestles with this problem of ultimate effect, but without a conclusive outcome. Is catastrophic optimism justied? Is testimony effective action in the world or only empty ritual? Are there unanticipated consequences? First, with regard to relieving suffering, one may wonder whether the testimony process contributes to an outcome that both author and subjects would oppose: the further dehumanization of victims. The witnesses in the book have freely given their consent, human subjects protocols have been observed, and there are few lurid details. Doctors and clinical practitioners are probably used to such material; but people without such professional armor can feel uneasily like voyeurs invading the most private space of other vulnerable human beings lives. Outing the perpetrators inevitably involves exposure and possible shaming of victims. Further, the very call for attention by authors and victims can advance the psychological numbing of the audience that it would seek to redress. Second, there is the hope for peace and reconciliation. Testimony in these cases comes from those sinned against rather than those sinning. Confession may be good for the soul, but for whose? The larger political question is whether this project will lead to less torture, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and posttraumatic stress disorder or be part of the process that allows them to continue or even expand. Weine makes clear that the testimony generally does not meet legal tests for conclusive, objective evidence against perpetrators of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Still, one of the aims of such work is to reveal hidden knowledge, to bring political violence to light as an offense against generic human morality, and to advance its prosecution in the court of public opinion. Is greater visibility the answer? Will increased information and knowledge do the trick? In pre-revolutionary Russia, some believed that the Czar was uninformed about abuses of imperial power. If only the Czar knew, they supposedly said. Others replied that the Czar would know if he wanted to. Henry Kissinger famously posed the issue differently. The problem was not that antagonists did not know each other well enough, but rather that they knew each other only too well. Many people involved in the atrocities of World War II claimed either that they

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were justied or that they didnt know. Some may really not have known. But others knew and supported the policies or didnt oppose them. Is it that we dont know, or that we dont care? And if we do care, what could we do about it? Breaking the seals of secrecy and shrinking the blind spots, widening awareness and opening society are laudable goals, but one should be wary, as Weine is, of expecting too much. From this perspective, the problem may not only be a general lack of knowledge, but also a lack of heart and power from both political leaders and political followers. Who wants to learn which lessons from which histories? It is said that one should not judge a book by its cover, and book reviews do not ordinarily address production values. Nevertheless, a book is a physical artifact and the packaging wraps the message. Northwestern University Press, like many university presses, is faced with increasing nancial constraints. These pressures have contributed in this case to a very simple cover, a small type font, segregated endnotes, and absence of a consolidated reference list. These characteristics affect the ability of the book to attract the attention of its potential audience and of its readers to access its full content. It is hard to avoid feeling that, even within the current economic environment, the publisher could do a better job for its authors and readers. I strongly recommend the book to readers interested in narrative analysis of violent political events. It is compellingly written, carefully presenting and discussing the testimonies of victims of political violence. It advances a complex understanding of such experiences and makes connections between literary, social scientic, and medical theory. It moves us forward in the attempt to apply such knowledge to actual personal and political events and, one may hope, to create a better world for those who follow. Francis A. Beer University of Colorado