Rating: 
Summary: Not a Bush Bash Book
Review: This book is not a typical Bush bashing book. The author engages in a detailed analysis of Bush by looking at how Bush speaks. While other books use fact manipulation and anecdotal evidence, this book uses the language strait out of Bush's mouth. One aspect of this book that is particularly helpful is that when quotes are used, they are large enough to provide a context for what is being said. This lends credibilty to the author's analysis.
Overall, this book is well written, informative, and easy to read.
Rating:
Summary: An Amazingly Well-written and Well-researched Book
Review: My title says it all. It is too bad Republicans, for the most part, don't read. If nothing else the preface alone would be a learning experience.
One day the United States will revert back to a democratic country and then this book might be required reading in every high school civics and government class. If it were now, America would be looking forward to a much brighter future.
Rating: 
Summary: Smiley, Cheer Up!
Review: Not to worry, President Bush will be re-elected in November and, I'm sure, will continue to tickle you pink with grammatical goofs. Afganistan and Irag are progressing toward democracy and you'll still be able to cash your government entitlements. Saddam Hussein has been captured but you personally are free to bash christians in our country. The U.S. will continue to be the greatest nation on the face of the earth but you'll continue to be free to advocate its takeover by the U.N. All of this should make you happy!
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Summary: To the Authors of "Hey, Democrats!" and "Whiney..."
Review: This book would have been funnier in the year *before* Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11, when all we had to worry about was whether our Prez had smoked ganja when young or had received sexual favors from a woman not his wife. Now it's officially crossed the line from "funny" to "frightening." Maybe we don't need a president with a silver tongue and a talent for gab, and God knows I didn't like the Clintons; but do we really need a president and a cabinet who have lied to us at every turn, have gleefully blown our economy to smithereens and apparently planned from the beginning to hurl us headlong into a war to smash a small, ostracized country in order to install a government staffed by people every bit as evil and corrupt as those who preceded them, based on intelligence that was apparently known to be suspect by pretty much anyone who's ever *read a book*? Or who now seem to want to extend that war to every country that seems vaguely unfriendly towards the West, in spite of the fact that our military is now stretched to the breaking point? Or who really like being in bed with the Saudis and Pakistanis, governments with far, far stronger (verifiable) ties to Al Quaeda than Iraq ever did? Who have so far managed to avoid capturing or killing the architect of all of this rampant misery? Who have gutted benefits for the American military? Who apparently take advice from believers in Christian Reconstructionism, and people who believe in a literal Biblical Apocalypse? Who have passed the biggest civil-rights rollback in American history complete with (fortunately vetoed) sequel, placed convicted criminals like Henry Kissinger in positions of authority again, crippled American stem-cell research, and, most recently, managed to effectively gut CDC programs to study the spread of HIV or prevent its spread--unless those programs teach "abstinence only" sex ed, and nothing else? Or, finally, that his administration is violating treaty after treaty, and is frantically trying to restart a nuclear arms race?
I'll give you that the author is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Big deal. That doesn't automatically make him wrong, any more than being a conservative automatically makes Colin Powell--or you--wrong. He's recognized an important fact--a man's unguarded, throw-away remarks can give many important clues to his inner character, and his actions will do the rest. This book points out that Bush is not an especially literate man, but he *does* have the ability to read people--and he likes his decisions simple n' snappy, because that appeals to his voter base, whether those decisions are correct or not. His remarks reveal a lack of any real empathy or compassion for other human beings, and a nearly complete lack of concern that his war in the Middle East is costing the lives of Americans and others, or money and resources that would be better spent almost anywhere else. He seems even less concerned that he's managed to alienate virtually every country American has ever been allied with. Four more years of this may kill us all, and it may be that nobody can fix this mess, even if Kerry or (God help us all) Nader manages to get elected come November '04. The DYSLEXICON is comedy, in much the same sense that Orwell's "1984" is satire.
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Summary: Required Reading for Anyone Who Steps Into the Voting Booth
Review: The nuclear (or in the case of George W Bush "nu-kew-lar" )football that can launch an cataclysmic end of our planet is within a 3-second determination. Bush's lack of knowledge and his pride of former, should give pause to anyone who'd like to see their grandchildren in this lifetime.When you superimpose what the author so eloquently writes with what W is capble of doing, and has already done to the repution of the US, it is truly sobering.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea but not a great book
Review: I confess I may not have purchased this book if I didn't recognize the author's name. Mark Crispin Miller was a film professor at a Baltimore university when I was an undergrad well over a decade ago. I enrolled in his lecture course and he helped make Stanley Kubrick a little less inscrutable, so I figured I'd give him a chance to deconstruct George W. Bush as well. The "Dyslexicon" is three books in one. The center book, of course, is a lengthy compendium of the unelected President's misquotes. They're helpfully indexed by political issue. There are all your old favorites ("Families is where... wings take dream"). There are several quotes from Bush's own campaign autobiography ("A Charge To Keep") which doesn't sound as if it was written by Bush at all. Since the book contradicts his own views on turmoil at Yale in the late '60s, he probably didn't. Most important, I think, are the lengthy passages from the three debates with Al Gore in late 2000 that probably won Bush the election (or rather, put him in a position to get selected by the Supreme Court). For example, seeing in print how Gore dismantles Bush on issues such as affirmative action still had me scratching my head, just as I scratched my head in 2000 when the media declared that Bush "won" the debates. The quotes, as I said, are the core of the book. Around that is a lengthy media-science discourse on television news and how America as a nation selects their presidents. This part of the book is a polemic, highly political, and I confess that I wasn't 100% on board with Miller's arguments. However, his case is compellingly stated. The point of publishing a book like this is to raise issues and engage discourse. On that level it is a far higher quality of discussion than you would see from, say, Regnery Press, which is the preferred platform for those who spread Bushisms. The final portion of the revised book is the post-9/11 material. This book came out shortly after Bush was inaugurated, but was updated rather sensibly to show the changing focus of Bush's administration and policies. Miller deals well with the canonization of Bush after the tragedy, as spun by Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove. Less successful is his final argument, presented on pages 325-332 as "The Reason Why". First of all, you don't want to go around quoting Noam Chomsky to explain why 9/11 happened. There is a middle ground between the Chomsky and Bush views as to why America was selected for attack, but Miller doesn't stake it out. Are these the opinions Miller would have endorsed had Al Gore been President in 2001? In the end, though, Miller does an important job dissecting Bush's policies. America was sold a bill of goods, electing the most radical President in a century, believing him to be a centrist. Miller presents his unvarnished words, which are at turns laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply disturbing. The middle book is the one you need to own, and the supporting essays are worth considering as well.
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