The appalling anti-intellectualism of the George W. Bush administration.
Chilling. ( )

This relates to what is probably the most important issue of our time, and also to one of my favorite questions: is George W. Bush wicked or stupid, or, as I like to think, both. His administration reminded me of someone who used to fascinate me by telling lies that time alone would reveal to be false, much as if a woman lied about being pregnant. Somehow, she was always surprised when truth caught up with her.

Unfortunately, while it is in some ways a superb record of a disgraceful attempt to block science from revealing inconvenient truths, truths which the government is supposed to be structured to encourage, it is somewhat tedious, and unlikely to electrify the citizenry. Published at the end of Bush's presidency, its purpose is somewhat unclear and perhaps this is one of the problems. I finished about a third of it before giving up. I think that I got the message, so perhaps I am not losing too much. Perhaps I was just too tired, or perhaps I'm in the early stages of senility, but I decided that my memory is not up to this book. Bowen throws out a vast number of names, acronyms, jumps back and forth in time, and introduces topics with a promise to talk about them later. He did the last once too often for me. The index simply isn't good enough to be much help to the reader if they forget some previously related detail. While one can look up people, topics are trickier, and if you've forgotten an acronym you are sunk because they are not in the index. A list of characters and acronyms and so forth would have been a great help.

This is an extremely detailed account that would be a model of writing the history of a political issue, but it is rather marred by the author's and publisher's decision not to have footnotes or endnotes, or a bibliography. Telling us to google for verification sounds like one of the nightmares of technological luddite, although Bowen has also given us websites to consult. I don't think that anyone who can wade through the text would be scared off by notes. I hope that Bowen kept to his promise to list them on his website, and that they stay there.

The book is not what I expected it to be. I gave up after 75 pages, which is rare for me. Think I was looking for a scientific book on climate change and all I got was a bunch of midlevel bureaucrats doing what they do best, which is nothing. A complete time waster. ( )