In another version of my life where I'm out playing the academic field, one of the courses I'd be aiming to teach would have a tile something like "1989 to 2001: Literature and Cinema from the Fall of the Wall to the Rise of Terror," and this book would go somewhere between Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and DeLillo's Mao II. Now, when I say that Skinny Legs and All is the perfect primer to Mao II its to the benefit of both novels. For having been published only a year apart they share a frightening amount of common ground. Beyond the fact that at their core both essentially deal with Terrorism in the wake the Cold War there are similarities that while submerged in Mao II beneath the smoky nuance and stark prophesy you'd expect of a black-and-white photograph, in Robbins's work rise and dance with all the chaos of color and sex. Both are novels reaching from the late 90s into the political stalemate that exploded onto the 21st century.