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Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk

Name: Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk
Author: Maureen Dowd
ISBN: 9781101220627

by Maureen Dowd

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Overview

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."

About the Author, Maureen Dowd

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.

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Editorials

Jacob Weisberg

As with any assemblage of in-the-moment journalism, some of Dowd's columns hold up better than others. Among her best are an account of a visit to the lingerie section of a department store in Riyadh, which led to a frightening encounter with the Saudi vice cops, and a column entitled ''Pappy and Poppy'' in which she compares the Kennedy and Bush clans. ''The Bushes were trying to de-Anglicize and lose the silver spoon while the Kennedys were trying to Anglicize and seize it,'' she writes.
— The New York Times

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. Simultaneous release with Putnam hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 2). (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

How many ways are there to call a president callow, incurious, provincial, and overmatched? Dowd covers what has to be most of them in this generous collection of 145 of her New York Times columns about George W. Bush, father, and family. Although she states, "I'm not well suited to being a polemicist," in fact Dowd fills that role so splendidly a reviewer could happily quote from almost any page. "W. avenged his dad, replaced his dad, made his dad proud and rebelled against his dad, all with the same war," she says in a nice summary of a few recurring themes. Recurring themes, in fact, are the book's one problem, since past a certain point one columnist's take on one president seems repetitive, even for so keen a writer as Dowd, who won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. This, her first book, mainly includes columns from 2000-2004. While a collection spanning more of Dowd's career might have served her better, in this election season the book will be in demand. Recommended for any library.-Robert F. Nardini, Chichester, NH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.