Product Description

From Washington to Kennebunkport to Texas to old' and new' Europe Maureen Dowd has trained her binoculars on the Bush dynasty for the past two decades. In this, 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. It is a turbulent odyssey that charts how a Shakespearean cast of regents, courtiers and neo-Conservatives -- all with their own subterranean agendas have taken on King George II's War on Terror'. As she writes in Bushworld, It's their reality. We just live and die in it."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #882303 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Amazon.co.uk
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 Dubya. "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, Amazon.com

The Sunday Telegraph
'...Dowd is mordantly witty and sharply incisive.'

The Irish Times
'...the canniest political columnist at work in America today.'

Customer Reviews

Brave commentary, perfect prose
Maureen Dowd should be required reading for every Briton who cares about the wide-ranging affect that George W. Bush has had on the UK and the world. Her columns are smart, perceptive, funny and extremely brave. No one understands, or explains, the Bushes -- Papa, and Dubya -- better than Ms. Dowd... I have bought copies for all my friends. I highly recommend BUSHWORLD.

Hilarious - provided you're not Republican
I'm a big fan of Maureen Dowd - I lap up her columns in the "New York Times", especially her adroit skewering of the Bush clan. This book is a collection of her columns written for the NYT during the first Bush (Dubya) Administration, from just prior to the election (vs. Gore) to just before the recent Kerry election. Her sound good sense, biting wit and shrewd observations make these an absolute treat. You begin to see why the Bush clan call her the Cobra.

The only problem with this book (and the reason for four stars) is that the weekly column format doesn't translate well into book format. When you read them in the paper, they are spaced apart by at least several days, so the fact that they express similar views or sentiments doesn't matter. In a book, they come cheek-by-jowl, and the effect is somewhat reduced by the repetition.

However, I'd still describe this book as a must-read, if only as a reminder that intelligence still survives in the USA and will hopefully one day once again be a feature of the US Government.