Molly Ivins’ new book subtitled: “Life in George W. Bush’s America” is a welcome edition to the veritable pantheon of literature exposing the lies and criminality of the current American president. Ivins pitches her work to the averagely intelligent Bush-hater. She avoids the pitfalls of the likes of Chomsky whose overly academic style prevents them from reaching out to a wider audience. She also manages not to dumb down to the sort of Michael Moore comic book level. The politically-aware and well-read person can read “Bushwhacked” and come away having learnt something new while the less frequent reader can get through the book without recourse to a dictionary.

“Bushwhacked” is the sequel to “Shrub” her study of Dubya’s time as governor of Texas from 1994-2000. Dubya’s profile may have increased but Ivins makes clear that his old Texan habit of rewarding his big business donors is still very much in evidence. The author brings the same scrupulous eye for detail and barely suppressed sense of outrage to the sequel. Bush’s policies on jobs, the environment, education and energy are all tarred and feathered by Ivins. Only when it comes to foreign policy does she stumble. The chapter on international relations under Bush’s tutelage becomes little more than a re-hashing of events without any narrative drive.

In the main though Ivins puts her encyclopaedic knowledge of Bush’s business cronies to good use. Such is the sheer volume of back-room deals she exposes that you can’t help but get angry with the lapdog US media which leaves these stories unreported.

Although Ivins is working on a larger canvas than previously, her Texan idiosyncracies remain from “Shrub”. She peppers her work with what can only be described as Texanisms capturing the bluntness and earthy humour of its people “smart enough to tell chicken shit from chicken salad” etc. Readers of “Shrub” will also be pleased to hear that Ivins finds room for more anecdotes from the bizarre world of Texan politics. In one aside, she shows how the Houston school board decided to phase in air-conditioning in the city’s schools:

“After a school board debate about who gets air-conditioning first, a board member proposed following the alphabet. The city’s African-American high school campuses at the time were Wheatley, Worthing, Yates and Washington.”

The real novelty of “Bushwhacked” as compared to “Shrub” is the use of personal narrative to illustrate a wider political point. Each chapter is based around the story of a real life person who is suffering in Bush’s America; the man who lost his life savings when Enron went under, the woman with swollen thumbs from gutting catfish all day, the old man who died from food poisoning. It is the literary equivalent of the anecdote in a speech. Personal stories remain in the memory long after the broader political point has been forgotten.

My only problem with Ivins’ writing is that I don’t really go along with her politics. She might be a liberal in America, she’s probably a communist in Texas, but she’s quite a bit to the right of many people in Europe. I agree with everything she says about Bush, I just don’t subscribe to her belief that everything will be rosy once a Democrat is back in the White House. To me most Democrats are just Republicans in drag, serving up the same free-market policies in a slightly less callous package. Overall though this book is a fine read, worth eight pounds of anybody’s money.