Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk

"In her first book, the celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist delivers a scorching-and often scorchingly funny-illumination of the Bush administration?s fractured adventures in empire-building. From Washington to Kennebunkport to Texas to old Europe and new Europe during the past two decades, Maureen Dowd has trained her binoculars on the Bush dynasty, putting them, as both 41 and 43 have complained to her, ""on the couch."" Here she wittily dissects the Oedipal loop-de-loop between father and son and the Orwellian logic of the rush to war in Iraq. It's a turbulent odyssey charting how a Shakespearean cast of regents, courtiers and neo-con cabalists-all with their own subterranean agendas-hijack King George II's war on terror and upend the senior Bush's cherished internationalist foreign policy and Persian Gulf coalition. As she's written about Bushworld, ""It's their reality. We just live and die in it."" For 30 years, Maureen Dowd has written about Washington-and America-in a voice that is acerbic, passionate, outraged and incisive. But nothing has engaged her as powerfully as the extraordinary agendas, absurdities and obsessions of George the younger. Drawing upon her celebrated columns, with a new introductory essay, she probes the topsy-turvy alternative universe of a group she has made recognizable by their first names, middle initials, nicknames or numbers - 41, the Boy Emperor, Rummy, Condi, Wolfie, Uncle Dick of the Underworld, General Karl, Prince of Darkness (Richard Perle) and her own nickname from W., the Cobra-as they seek an extreme makeover of the country and the world. Bushworld, is a book any reader who cares about the real world won't want to miss. "

The Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist takes on the Bush administration--now updated with new material.

For the past two decades, Maureen Dowd has trained her binoculars-and her scorching wit-on the Bush dynasty. Here, she explores and dissects the entire story, in all its Oedipal, Orwellian, Shakespearean glory. Drawing from her New York Times column, she journeys to Maine, Texas, Washington, old Europe, new Europe, and Saudi Arabia, chronicling both father and son as well as the cast of characters surrounding them. For any reader who cares about America, this is essential reading. As Dowd says about Bushworld: "It's their reality. We only live and die in it."

Amazon.com
If metaphors were cigarettes, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd would be a chain smoker. Through many years and countless columns spent chronicling the fall of George H.W. Bush and the ascension of George W. Bush, Dowd has employed analogies to feudalism, The Godfather, Mini-Me, traditional "mommy" and "daddy" roles, and scores more. In this, her first book, Dowd compiles well over a hundred columns and summarizes the Bush dynasty under a single comprehensive analogy: an alternate universe called Bushworld ("It's their reality. We just live and die in it.") Dowd, who as a reporter was assigned to cover the elder Bush, seems to have a soft spot for the guy even as she describes a president with no plans to do anything but remain president. But she is alarmed by the younger Bush whom she sees surrounding himself with dangerous ideologues and starting a poorly thought-out war with disastrous consequences. Each column is relatively short, and Dowd never shares much new information, but instead offers the kind of informed skeptical perspective that's essential when interpreting the public statements of policymakers. Dowd's cleverness sometimes gets in the way of clarity, and one occasionally wishes she'd quit kidding around and say something substantive, especially since the reader of Bushworld will likely be several years removed from the news that inspired a particular column. Cleverness can be a virtue for a writer as well, getting a laugh while perfectly illustrating a point, such as when she says of the notoriously cloistered W. "All presidents are in a bubble, but the boy king was so insulated he was in a thermos." Or when she says of the Iraq War's aftermath "for the first time in history, Americans are searching for the reasons we went to war after the war is over." --John Moe --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Dowd's first collection of op-ed pieces tightly focuses on George W. Bush (aka "W.," "43," "our kinda-sorta chief executive," and "the boy king"). Dowd's 30 years of covering Washington politics enable her to start her trajectory with "Poppy" Bush packing up after his one-term presidency while sons Jeb and W. run for governor of Florida and Texas, respectively. Soon listeners are propelled into the messy Gore/Bush election of 2000 (between "the insufferable and the insufficient"), the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War, which Dowd sees as a way for Bush Jr. to settle old scores with "Poppy's" Gulf War foe Saddam. Mazur's nimble narration is assured. She never stumbles over the tongue-twisting foreign names and locations, and she underplays Dowd's tart observations with a deadpan delivery. Dowd's "Grilled Over Rats" essay on a GOP anti-Gore ad that supposedly used subliminal messages originally ran with specific words in bold, creating its own subliminal message. On CD, the essay is read twice—the second time reading only the highlighted words. Penguin's spare packaging extends to the discs themselves. All essays begin with a new track, but without a title listing on disc or package, locating a specific essay among 144 pieces can prove frustrating.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Maureen Dowd was born in Washington, D.C., received a BA in English from Catholic University in 1973, then began her career at the Washington Star. From there she went to Time magazine, then moved to The New York Times in 1986 as a Washington correspondent. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as a White House correspondent. In 1995 she became a columnist for The New York Times's Op-Ed page and in 1999 won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary.