Once freed of a film’s running time Stover could really take his time fleshing out issues that the movie was forced to speed through. For example, he made it clear as day why tension had mounted between the Jedi and Palpatine, and the current political climate on Courasant.

The relationship between Anakin and Palpatine is explored much more then in the movie. In the scene when Palpatine revealed himself to Anakin, Palpatine’s emphasis on his right to live and his prediction that the Jedi would kill him on the spot for his religious beliefs, I found, much more effective then in the film. From what I recall, the film focused more on trying to save Amadala from her predicted demise.

I thought that the effect Anakin’s visions were having on him were much better explained then in the movie. The novel, basically, had Anakin terrified to rest and exhausted from sleep depravation. This worked in that when the climatic battle between Windu and Palpatine came to a head, Anakin (who, at that point, was nothing short of delerious from exhustion) obviously wasn’t thinking clearly.

I loved the way that the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan developed. It was very well illustrated that Anakin was always using Obi-Wan as his emotional anchor and when removed of that, just how easily he could be manipulated by someone Anakin saw as never having lied to him.

The only thing that I wound up dinging the novel for was the Wookies role and Yoda’s escape. It’s virtually missing, as if someone just accidentally edited it out. It was really bizarre that it was just … not there.

Outstanding book though, as much as I liked the film, the book is significantly better.

The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos.

The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress. And according to the psychologists Elliot Turiel and Judith Smetana, preschoolers have an inkling of the difference between societal conventions and moral principles. Four-year-olds say that it is not O.K. to wear pajamas to school (a convention) and also not O.K. to hit a little girl for no reason (a moral principle). But when asked whether these actions would be O.K. if the teacher allowed them, most of the children said that wearing pajamas would now be fine but that hitting a little girl would still not be.

Though no one has identified genes for morality, there is circumstantial evidence they exist. The character traits called “conscientiousness†and “agreeableness†are far more correlated in identical twins separated at birth (who share their genes but not their environment) than in adoptive siblings raised together (who share their environment but not their genes). People given diagnoses of “antisocial personality disorder†or “psychopathy†show signs of morality blindness from the time they are children.

In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies. However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,†he says.

Jon Stewart: Many people are free-market capitalists, and they always talk about free-market capitalism, and that is our economic theory. So why do we have a Fed? Is the free market – wouldn’t the market take care of interest rates and all that? Why do we have someone adjusting the rates if we are a free-market society?

Alan Greenspan: You’re raising a very fundamental question. … You didn’t need central bank when we were on the gold standard, which was back in the nineteenth century. And all of the automatic things occurred because people would buy and sell gold, and the market would do what the Fed does now. But: most everybody in the world by the 1930s decided that the gold standard was strangling the economy. And universally this gold standard was abandoned. But: you need somebody to determine –or some mechanism – how much money is out there, because remember, the amount of money relates to the amount of inflation in the economy. … In any event the more money you have, relative to the amount of goods, the more inflation you have, and that’s not good. So:

Stewart: So we’re not a free market then.

Greenspan: No. No.

Stewart: There’s a visible – there’s a benevolent hand that touches us.

Greenspan: Absolutely. You’re quite correct. To the extent that there is a central bank governing the amount of money in the system, that is not a free market. Most people call it regulation.

More than half the adults in this country won’t pick up a novel this year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Not one. And the rate of decline has almost tripled in the past decade.