CATEGORY

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