 The authors show that the American heroic ideal, conveyed in formula stories of "the American monomyth," is explicitly anti-democratic and contagious.Crusading loners, attracted by guns, bombs, and the call to destroy evil, act out the premises of the myth with tragic consequences.This book shows how Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski have the courage of the mythic convictions ritually enacted by celebrity stars such as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Steven Seagal.