Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America - Softcover

Ivins, Molly; Dubose, Lou

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375713115 ISBN 13: 9780375713118

Publisher: Vintage, 2004

Synopsis

A simultaneously rollicking and sobering indictment of the policies of President George W. Bush, Bushwhacked chronicles the destructive impact of the Bush administration on the very people who put him in the White House in the first place. Here are the ties that connected Bush to Enron, yes, but here, too, is the story of the woman who walks six miles to the unemployment office daily, wondering what happened to the economic security Bush promised. Here are reports on failed nation-building missions in Kabul and Baghdad. Here, too, the story of a rancher who has fallen prey to a Bush-Cheney interior department that is perhaps a wee bit too cozy with the oil industry. Bushwhacked is highly original and entirely thought-provoking—essential reading for anyone living in George W. Bush's America.

About this title

Review:

She tried to warn us: With the publication of Shrub in early 2000, syndicated columnist Molly Ivins detailed George W. Bush’s privileged rise and disastrous reign as governor of Texas in the mid- to late ‘90s. In Bushwhacked, she looks at his first term as president. The picture she paints is unremittingly bleak—unless, of course, you’re a big campaign donor well served by Bush’s prescription for all economic ills (deregulation, tax cuts for those who need them least, and lax enforcement of worker and environmental safety standards). As the only president in U.S. history to slash taxes and go to war simultaneously, Bush wins consistently low marks from Ivins for pursuing "crony capitalism" to its inevitably depressing extremes. While many of the topics covered here have been covered extensively (Enron, the war in Iraq), Ivins does a good job of building on what’s already been written (proving Bush’s close ties to former Enron chief Ken Lay, and laying out the fundamentalist, apocalyptic view of Iraq and the Middle East that drives Bush’s foreign policy). Ivins is particularly good in taking arcane federal regulations and showing how the Bush administration’s lax oversight has hurt ordinary Americans, making their jobs, homes, water, and food less safe. Ivins is no distanced observer. She’s clearly incensed by Bush’s policies, but her reporting is so detailed and writing so witty that even those who come to the book undecided about Bush will likely be outraged by the time they finish it. ----Keith Moerer

About the Author:

Molly Ivins’s column is syndicated to more than three hundred newspapers from Anchorage to Miami. A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, she is the former co-editor of The Texas Observer and the former Rocky Mountain bureau chief for The New York Times. Her freelance work has appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. She has a B.A. from Smith College and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. Her first book, Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, spent more than twelve months on the New York Times bestseller list.

Lou Dubose has worked as a journalist in Texas for twenty years. He has been editor of The Texas Observer and politics editor of The Austin Chronicle, and is the co-author of Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush. His freelance work has appeared in The Nation, Texas Monthly, The Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Liberty, Texas, Vindicator, and other publications. He is currently working on a book about Tom Delay. He lives with his wife, Jeanne Goka, in Austin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0375713115
• ISBN 13: 9780375713118
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368