Mark Twain said “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” In this five-volume series, Jim Freeman uncovers that dark side and strives to shine light on it.

2006 was possibly the most pivotal year of the decade, with the wheels apparently coming off American military and civil society on a dizzying daily basis. This third segment of The Dark Side of the Moon series begins with the Senate’s consideration of Sam Alito’s fitness to join the Supreme Court and winds up, some 460 pages later, with the Exxon’s Valdez oil spill lawsuit limping to completion after a 12-year swordfight.

What else was going on, while America twisted in the wind of wars going badly and the fear-factor leading us away from common sense? Quite a lot, actually, and The Dark Side of the Moon brings the year back into focus and sequence with an appropriate sense of humor and irony. Pivotal no doubt, but 2006 surely must also be counted among the most ironic years of the weird decade to which it belongs.