Everything we know we learn by osmosis. Our reasoning is rarely original.

We regurgitate what we are force-fed from the cradle--other people's beliefs, biases, and phobias. In his latest dystopia, W.

E. Gutman jousts with evil, absurdity, and paradox.

He grieves at the futility of "communism" while shining an unforgiving light on the vampirism of capitalism, the resurgence of fascism, religious fanaticism, and pride of ignorance which, he asserts, is the suit of armor of those who scorn knowledge, culture, civility, and the truth. Wading through, as they unfold, some of the most sordid chronicles of cruelty, hypocrisy, corruption, apathy, suffering, despair, lunacy, and death, and extrapolating from the lessons they impart, It Happened Tomorrow: It Will Happen Again Yesterday warns against the demise of farsighted "memory"--the faculty, the sagacity to see the future as the unavoidable replication of a failed past.

Past is prologue. We reap what we sow.

Praise received:"In confronting W. E.

Gutman's rage over the state of the world, it is easy to overlook how well he writes, with his grim descriptions of global conflicts and crises bookmarked by philosophical reflections on how to rescue our abused human values from this moral quagmire. It Happened Tomorrow: It Will Happen Again Yesterday may offer little room for optimism, yet Gutman clearly had to write it; after a long life of fighting the good fight, he refuses to surrender, and he challenges us not to give up.

"--ALAN RIDING, former correspondent for The New York Times and author of And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied ParisAbout the Author:Born in Paris, W. E.

Gutman is a veteran journalist, editor, columnist, and published author. A former press attaché, he reported from Central America from 1994 to 2006.

. .