From Publishers Weekly
No quarter is given in
Vanity Fair editor Carter's furious, comprehensive indictment of the Bush administration. Dispensing with satire and mind-of-Bush psychoanalysis, Carter and his researchers sum up a now-familiar anti-Bush case mainly through a relentless buildup of often bullet-pointed facts, including many thematic litanies of Bush policies, a list of American soldiers killed in Iraq and a debunking of the 2004 State of the Union address. A sprinkling of choice quotes highlights what come across as broken promises, cynical deceptions and presidential inanity ("It's clearly a budget. It's got lots of numbers in it") that Carter uses to sum up the administration. He condemns the shortage of biochemical warfare suits for American soldiers in Iraq, even though he believes Iraq had no biological or chemical weapons, and he blames Bush both for soaring trade deficits and for protectionist measures. Carter's voice comes through this blunt marshalling of facts and figures; people will be listening.
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Product Description
The editor of
Vanity Fair magazine offers a hard-hitting assessment of the current Bush administration and its disastrous effects on America at home and abroad.
One of North America’s leading magazine editors, Graydon Carter, addresses the fragile state of U.S. democracy with a searing review of the Bush administration. Carter has expressed his deep dissatisfaction with the current state of the nation in his monthly editor’s letters in
Vanity Fair — which have aroused widespread comment — and now provides a sweeping, painstakingly detailed account of the ruinous effects of this president’s actions.
The invasion of Iraq, which has proven so costly for the U.S. in lives, dollars and international standing, is only the tip of the iceberg. It is the war at home, a quiet, covert, and in many ways more lasting and damaging war, that makes Carter most wary. In almost every aspect of American life, those in the Bush White House have chipped away at decades’ worth of advances in personal rights, women’s rights, the economy and the environment. They have eroded primary civil liberties in the name of the “war on terror” and have amassed record deficits and trade imbalances. They have rolled back policy in every significant area of environmental protection and have squandered the goodwill of the world in the wake of September 11. America is now widely perceived as one of the most dangerous of countries.
Carter discusses these topics and many more with great cogency and specificity, detailing what Bush’s radical agenda means for America’s future — and for Canada’s, through its close and complex relationship with the United States.
What We’ve Lost is the impassioned argument of a concerned citizen in response to the most precarious political crisis of our time.
