BushwhackedLife in George W. Bush's America

A concerned journalist lays out the case against Bush.
The late columnist Molly Ivins made it her mad mission to lambaste George Bush at every opportunity. Bushwhacked, a followup to Shrub, recounts the deficiencies of Bush's first presidential term through Ivins's tough-talking and endearingly caustic perspective. Ivins reads, and her Texan anger bristles beneath the surface of this recording, emerging in colloquialisms like "pizzle" or when dwelling upon the glaring inequalities caused by Bush's policies.

Like her fellow Texan liberals, former governor Ann Richards and activist-author Jim Hightower, Ivins is motivated by a compassionate fury, but this audio book reminds the listener that Ivins was as much a journalist as she was a commentator. Crisp descriptive details of environmental crusaders and muckraking cowboys oscillate with vigorously supported probings into Bush's diplomatic mangling of North Korea, his Christian-tinged motivations and his stacking of the Supreme Court with conservative justices. Observations about disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are even more prescient in light of his recent resignation.

If Ivins doesn't always read her book with the kind of righteous indignation contained within her snappy sentences, it may be because of her declining health at the time. But her velvety voice still carries a great empathy for where America has been heading and the children and working people that Bush's policies have left behind. If this audiobook isn't the ideal legacy for Ivins, it reminds us of the vacuum in rabble-rousing left by her absence.