Although the subject matter of this book - an account of Mark Latham's 2004 election campaign and its immediate aftermath - is intrinsically interesting, the book itself is only moderately so. It's basically a blow-by-blow account of the campaign itself (with a bit of biographical/contextual material at the beginning, and a couple of chapters dealing with the aftermath of the worse-than-expected loss at the end), and light on analysis - with its focus on recounting events rather than shedding any real light on the personalities or motivations of its key figures, it reads more as a piece of extended journalism than as a substantial work on Latham, the 2004 election, the ALP, or the Australian political scene generally.
Lagan's key theme (such as it is) is, as suggested by the book's title, that of Latham as a lone rider, prone to acting on his own instincts to the exclusion of the advice of others, and this is sketched out by reference to specific incidents as well as being grounded in his upbringing and family background. The problem for me was that, reading this book, I felt as if I was simply being reading another iteration of the received wisdom about Latham and his spectacular downfall, rather than gaining anything new or dissentient from Loner; as an only moderately attentive follower of national politics, I hoped to learn a lot more from the book than I actually did.
