"The most profane, hilarious, and insightful book I've read in quite a while." — BEN SHAPIRO "Kevin Williamson's gonzo merger of polemic, autobiography, and batsh*t craziness is totally brilliant." — JOHN PODHORETZ, Commentary "Ideological minorities – including the smallest minority, the individual – can get trampled by the unity stampede (as my friend Kevin Williamson masterfully elucidates in his new book, The Smallest Minority )." — JONAH GOLDBERG “ The Smallest Minorit y is the perfect antidote to our heedless age of populist politics. It is a book unafraid to tell the people that they’re awful.” — NATIONAL REVIEW "Williamson is blistering and irreverent, stepping without doubt on more than a few toes—but, then again, that’s kind of the point." — THE NEW CRITERION "Stylish, unrestrained, and straight from the mind of a pissed-off genius." — THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON Kevin Williamson is "shocking and brutal" (RUTH MARCUS, Washington Post ), "a total jack**s" (WILL SALETAN, Slate ), and "totally reprehensible" (PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times ). Reader beware: Kevin D. Williamson—the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle—comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.” The Smallest Minority is by no means a memoir, though Williamson does reflect on that “tawdry little episode” with The Atlantic in which he became all-too-intimately acquainted with mob outrage and the forces of tribalism. Rather, this book is a dizzying tour through a world you’ll be horrified to recognize as your own. With biting appraisals of social media (“an economy of Willy Lomans,” political hustlers (“that certain kind of man or woman…who will kiss the collective ass of the mob”), journalists (“a contemptible union of neediness and arrogance”) and identity politics (“identity is more accessible than policy, which requires effort”), The Smallest Minority is a defiant, funny, and terrifyingly insightful book about what we human beings have done to ourselves. "He's not one of the most talented conservative writers in America. He's one of the most talented writers in America. "... and that's why he can't work here." (Jeffrey Goldberg editor in chief, The Atlantic ) "Shocking and brutal... also intellectually honest." (Ruth Marcus Washington Post ) "Kevin Williamson can be a total jackass. He has also written some of the sharpest, most insightful work I've read. Some folks are complicated that way." (Will Saletan Slate ) "Kevin Williamson's gonzo merger of polemic, autobiography, and bats—t craziness is totally brilliant." (John Podhoretz Commentary ) "Disrespectful, impertinent, snide, insulting, and hurtful—in short, everything I look for in a writer." (Nick Searcy actor ) "Truly reprehensible." (Paul Krugman New York Times ) "An ogre." (Jack Shafer Politico ) "An ogre." (Jack Shafer Politico ) "Unemployable." (Rich Lowry National Review ) KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON has written for the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , Indian Express , Playboy , The New Criterion , Academic Questions , and Commentary , and for an infamous three days he was a staff writer at The Atlantic . A reporter and columnist for National Review , he has taught at Hillsdale and the King’s College and writes a regular column for the New York Post . His previous books include The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics . This excerpt was published in The New York Post : I used to work not far from a temple in New Delhi dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey-faced Hindu deity who is the patron of the capital city — a 108-foot-tall statue of him looms over the Jhandewalan metro station. Monkeys are a problem. Basically, you can’t screw with a monkey in Delhi, for religious and civic reasons, so there’s a plague of the things all over the city but especially in the temple precincts. They are basically high-IQ New York subway rats with opposable thumbs. It’s not good. The pilgrims come to seek Hanuman’s blessing, and they feed the monkeys — feeding the plague. The amateurs bring them bananas and fruit and such, but the real pros — the Hanuman-worship insiders — bring the monkeys what they really like: McDonald’s. They’re lovin’ it. The monkeys in India are a gigantic pain in the ass and a genuine menace, too: Every now and then, they kill somebody, or maim somebody pretty good. If you’ve ever been to the monkey house in one of those awful downscale zoos, you know what monkeys — these particular monkeys — are like: They jerk off and fling poo al