So Great a Conspiracy?

The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics, by Jonathan Chait (Houghton Mifflin, 304 pp., $25)

IN the introduction to this book, New Republic senior editor Jonathan Chait writes: “I have this problem. Whenever I try to explain what’s happening in American politics-I mean, what’s really happening-I wind up sounding a bit like an unhinged conspiracy theorist. But honestly, I’m not.”