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.

"As scathingly funny as she is zingingly succinct, New York Times op-ed columnist Dowd has been riding Bush & Co. since his presidential campaign first gathered steam in 1999. Her approach has less to do with party than class: since winning the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for her commentary on the Clinton impeachment, Dowd, originally from working-class, Washington, D.C., has become the unlikely mouthpiece of broad-swath middle-class anger at corporate bosses, the conservative very rich and hawks of all stripes. The book collects five-plus years of pieces whose titles ('Bomb and Switch'; 'Weapons of Mass Redaction') draw one into Dowd's weirdly high-low tabloid rata-tat-tat: 'The Boy Emperor's head hurt. All the oppressive obligations of statecraft were swimming through his brain like hungry koi.' The best of them synthesize out loud what the punditocracy e-mails to each other in private as the news day progresses. That real-time quality, with Dowd riffing out loud in medias res, doesn't always work in book form. But with events having unfolded so rapidly in the last five years, this compendium, Dowd's first, serves as a kind of summa for the mochaccino set's political grievances. Others cover the same waterfront, but Dowd's keen dramatizations of complex situations, uncannily biting caricatures and merciless re-spinning of spin set her far apart from the pack. The results remain devastating, even after the fact: 'Gorzac: works to counteract nausea that occurs when you turn on the TV and see Al promising to 'let it rip'....' "Agent, Esther Newberg. (Aug.) Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Dowd presents a comic-tragic look at the current Bush administration....Bush detractors will love Dowd's sharp analysis, but even his fans should acknowledge her wit." Booklist

"Good Dowd can balance substance and sizzle and still be acidulous and funny, drawing righteous blood with tongue...in cheek..." Los Angeles Times

"As with any assemblage of in-the-moment journalism, some of Dowd's columns hold up better than others." New York Times

For 30 years, Dowd has written about Washington — and America — in a voice that is acerbic, passionate, outraged, and incisive. Drawing upon her celebrated columns, with a new introductory essay, she now probes the topsy-turvy alternative universe of the Bush administration.

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.

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."

A Washington native, Maureen Dowd became a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page in 1995, after reporting on the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton White Houses. She is now covering her sixth presidential campaign — and the second generation of Bush presidents who went to war with the same Iraqi dictator. Before becoming a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page in 1995, she wrote a column, "On Washington," for the New York Times Magazine. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for distinguished commentary for chronicling the Clinton impeachment follies, as the Times entry put it, "with style as well as insight, with faultless instinct for hypocrisy in high places."