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Hardcover Sore Winners: And the Rest of Us in George Bush's America Book

ISBN: 0385511876

ISBN13: 9780385511872

Sore Winners: And the Rest of Us in George Bush's America

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Format: Hardcover

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Book Overview

Politics and culture, culture and politics. They've never been normal in America, but today they're weirder than ever. Millionaire populists like Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore dominate a political... This description may be from another edition of this product.

Customer Reviews

5 ratings

THE NINE LIVES OF GEORGE BUSH

If you read anything about Bush you've have to read this. It's not your typical Bush bashing diatribe but a well written analysis of how in the world a guy who has failed at everything could succeed at being president. The kinetics of W's inner circle is explored with a great expose on Colin Powell who seems to be virtually powerless in the face of Rumsfield and Cheney. ---A++ John Powers writing style shines throughout!!

A lucid look at a culture in crisis

It's easy to pen a diatribe against the Bush regime, but John Powers does something different. His witty, opinionated (yet even-handed) and amazingly wide ranging critique of political and popular culture during this dark patch of American history is a remarkable acheivement. It's a heartening book that contextualizes not only the president and his cronies, but reality TV, Michael Moore, dour leftists, and various other seemingly unhinged aspects of American media. Powers pulls his material together seamlessly, creating an important book of our moment.

Powers Takes On . . . Bush World

John Powers is a reasonable person. Reason has virtually disappeared from American political life, replaced by screaming and Bible-thumping and blind partisanship; much like special effects have replaced dialogue in Hollywood movies. As a movie critic for L.A. Weekly, Vogue and NPR -- and one of the best critics in the country -- Powers is familiar with the big loud bangs that distract from the nonsense of a script. It's not so different with American culture today: lots of noise, very little sense. And nobody diagnoses that problem like Powers. "Sore Winners" is entertaining and consistently hilarious. It is ambitious. It is dense and it's lucid. It's local and global. It treats small things and large things. It's confessional and philosophical; it's factual and intelligent and broadly informed. It is also supremely reasonable. Powers' complicated liberal-left leanings are clear, but his main platform is Reason. The American right and the left are both praised and kicked. Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore get their dues and boos. He quotes Lyndon Johnson and Che Guevara. Nothing is sacred, except the things that should be, like truth, progressive change, and a national conscience -- and a few other things that've been drowned out by the screaming. "Sore Winners" is an unusual book, and an important one. Run out and read it now. -- Helen Knode

Why Bush is just the tip of the cultural iceberg

For most of the last two decades, I've ran to pick up each LA Weekly just to read John Powers amazing, righteous, witty and truthful columns about movies, the arts, politics and culture. Finally the world outside LA can read his brilliant work, with this book - which is all new, not a collection of his prior work! And he's taken on the most important issue of all for us right now. Not the obvious - which is to beat the crap out of Bush, something already being done early and often elsewhere - though Powers does it brilliantly here. But the more important work, which few others are doing, of analyzing why we have Bush, and how what's really frightening about him is that he is merely an extension of the zeitgeist - the trends in our mass culture which his presidency is the product of. Powers incisively surveys the cultural world around us, and he makes hilarious - and terrifying - sense. In ways that don't just preach to the converted. Every point he makes hits home, and you find yourself looking around you with new eyes, knowing now you should have seen this coming. On Bush World, even if you've tried the rest - now read the best!

Not just another Bush bashing

I have long enjoyed John Powers' brilliant columns in the L.A. Weekly. It almost doesn't matter what the subject is--he has something insightful and provocative to say. And as a writer myself, I appreciate his easy-to-digest, witty, precise style. I learn something new every time I read Powers, and SORE WINNERS is no exception. I've just started the book, but I'm already intrigued by his recapitulation of Social Darwinism and how it's being played out again by the Bushies. More fuel--intellectual fuel--for our ire against the direction this administration is taking us. I'm looking forward to the rest of this highly informative work.
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