The Question (ID Number 12)...

Tell me if I'm right. You pretty much had to pull your punches when you wrote Ishmael, because that book was written for Ted Turner and had to be a positive book about saving the world. But after you got your foot in the door, you could say exactly what you wanted which explains why THE STORY OF B is such a hard-hitting book.

...and the response:

It's reasonable to think that I might have pulled my punches in writing a book "for Ted Turner," but I did nothing of the kind. It was only after hearing from a few hundred readers of Ishmael that I realized that some of the punches delivered in that book weren't getting through. I knew at that point that I really had to "sit down" on my punches in my next book (to continue the boxing metaphor). This explains the difference in style you perceive between Ishmael and THE STORY OF B.