Unless you have been stuck under a rock, you probably know that Neil Armstrong died yesterday. In July 1969, I, like so many millions of others, watched as he made “One small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind.” (I am using the words as he said he spoke them rather than how we heard them as I can fully appreciate how there could be a comm drop – as should anyone who has had a phone drop the occasional word.)

That summer, I was 17 years old and about to start my senior year in high school. Vietnam was still raging; Richard Nixon had been president for only a few months, and I had all my life and the world in front of me.

Dunn divides the book into a prologue and four parts. The prologue describes the continuity of her falsehoods and their uses, from her beginnings to the present. The four parts, in turn, concentrate on her ascension in Alaska, from Wasilla to Juneau; the 2008 national campaign as John McCain’s running mate in a presidential contest; her return to Alaska until the July 2009 resignation; and her national presence over the past 20 months, as a unique sort of new wave political grifter who combines televangelism, celebrity cult social media presence and radical right-wing hate subtexts in unique ways.

As a young man, James Carroll had an epiphany deep in the diggings of an archeological excavation under Old Jerusalem. He had become a Catholic priest. In his activities there and in Bethlehem, he had failed to grow close to any sense of wonder over his physical closeness to events related to the life and death of Jesus. He had witnessed squabbling between and amongst clerics, often over petty issues. He was becoming less illuminated, more disenchanted every day. He acquired an elderly Dominican priest, who was also a renowned scholar and archeologist, as a guide. At first the man frustrated Carroll even more with his banter: