In The Terrible Twos Reed is supposedly outside of history; he sets his story in 1990, when the President is a former male model, the economy is worse than ever, and all that's left to trickle down is Christmas, which a bunch of power-hungry goons who run the country successfully buy and sell. God Made Alaska for the Indians, on the other hand, assembles eight essays and an afterword on environmentalists, Native Americans, literary politicians, prize fight promotions, male sexuality, race relations, the troubles in Ulster as seen by Irish-Americans, and the problems of multicultural artists—all of which deal directly with the demoralizing state of events since 1976. But with Reed in control there's no real difference in subject or method, and the result is a penetrating vision which by now surely ranks as the new decade's most insightful literary critique of American morals and manners.

It's at this...