The art of the blurb

Writing a thoughtful book review takes time and effort, but writing a snappy blurb for a book is a skill in itself.  In my mailbox today was a Cambridge Univ. Press brochure advertising its recent and forthcoming international-relations titles, one of which is an edited volume Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics.  The blurber is James Der Derian, who says (inter alia): "This collection has the jolt of an intellectual defibrillator, bringing diplomacy back from a grossly exaggerated death while nurturing emergent forms of global mediation."

All I can say is: the book damn well better have the jolt of an intellectual defibrillator, because the title has the anti-jolt of an intellectual soporific.