Bitter, heavy-handed social satire has a long history in Western literature. Juvenal was an Ancient Roman writer whose views are similar to those of Condon. His Satires savage the corrupt politics of Rome and suggest that society as a whole has become a participant in its own victimization. Condon's writing is also reminiscent of the biting humor in Jonathan Swift's satiric fantasy Gulliver's Travels (1726). Condon creates a fantasy world for Emperor of America; historical events are twisted and changed, making the world of the novel a caricature of reality. Swift used these same techniques. In Gulliver's Travels the Lilliputians go to war over whether a soft-boiled egg should be opened from the fat end or the narrow end, showing that the reasons for waging war are often ridiculous. Swift also shows the Lilliputians abandoning their children to boarding schools until they are grown, satirizing a common...