Public discourse? More like public discord. The battle cries of our culture wars are rife with "loaded language"--be it bias, slant, or spin. But listen closely, or you'll miss what Ali Almossawi finds more frightening still: words that erase accountability, history, even identity through what they leave unsaid.

Speaking as wise old Mr. Rabbit, Almossawi leads us through a dark forest of rhetoric--aided by Orwell, Baldwin, and a squee-worthy cast of wide-eyed woodland creatures. Here, passive voice can pardon wrongdoers, statistics may be a smokescreen, gaslighting entraps the downtrodden, and irrelevant adjectives cement stereotypes. Emperor Squirrel isn't naked; he has a clothes-free sartorial style. Mouse's roof becomes flattened (Elephant's foot just happens to be there at the time). And when keen-eyed Owl claims a foreign shore, he seems to be overlooking someone . . .

Fans of Almossawi's An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments couldn't ask for a better primer on the less logical ways that words can trick us. It takes a long pair of ears to hear what's left unsaid--but when you're a rabbit in a badger world, listening makes all the difference.