To say that the Grumpy Vegan is a fan of author and New York Times columnist Frank Rich is to understate it. His Sunday column was a must-read -- indeed, the only reason to buy the paper -- until, well, NYT decided to hide it only to paying subscribers in its Times Select boutique. The toes curled, the wry grin smiled and the brain was amused and stimulated by Frank's satirical writing style. That's why all summer I waited patiently for his Greatest Story Ever Sold.

What could be more delicious than an entire book of biting commentary on politics inflamed by a scathing critique of mainstream culture? Greatest Story is a must-read. But it is written in a writing style unlike his columns.

Frank describes how Bush et al took us to war with Iraq. The twist in his narrative is that this is a story of how an administration packaged and marketed the war while it was saying one thing but secretly knew the truth was something else. For example,

"That cynical priority was what had dictated the timing of the rollout of the product in the first place: it wasn't a mushroom cloud that imminent as the White House pressed for a congressional resolution in the fall of 2002, it was the midterms."

And, again,

"Reeling from the criticism, Bush pleaded to ABC's Diane Sawyer that people not "play politics during this period of time." But just months earlier the president had flown from Crawford to Washington overnight to sign a symbolic bill intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead hospice patient flogged as a right-to-life cause by the Christian right. He was in no position now to lecture anyone about playing politics with tragedy."

To say that I wished I could write like Frank Rich -- specially in the style of his NYT columns -- is to understate it. ( )

some interesting views on the bush administration. Especially the dissection of the media and its reception. Apart from that the other information wasn't that revealing. ( )

I've admired Frank Rich's New York Times columns for some time. He always seems to be able to cut through the hype to get to the facts, and that is what he does excellently in this book. The purpose of the book is to show when the Bush administration knew what about Iraq and how they were spinning what they knew. The best part of the book for graphically showing this is the appendix, which has two parallel timelines. The first is the timeline of intelligence and what the administration knew when, and the second is the public pronouncements of the administration about the war, as well as relevant events and news reports that were known publicly at the time.

It is, of course, pretty damning evidence. I already knew most of it from other reading, but it is so well laid out here that it will be of great value to future historians, as well as those of us interested in current events. ( )

This book is subtitled "The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina" and is a point by point explanation of each and every time the Bush administration has lied to us in order to further its agenda at the expense of the American people. It's not new news, but it may be one of the first times the timeline of manipulation has been laid out so clearly and effectively. Reading it made me sick to my stomach. I know that history shows us this isn't the first time our elected leaders have proven unethical, but that this particular administration is blatantly so, and expects us to follow along with its wishes like lambs to the slaughter, makes my blood boil.

The best bit in this book comes in the epilogue and reads as follows:

...the Bush presidency could well prove, as its most severe critics have maintained, the worst ever. Its legacy will include the destruction of America's image, credibility, and prestige abroad; record budget deficits produced by unchecked spending and tax cuts; an abused and broken military; a subversion of the Constitution achieved by rigidly ideological judicial appointments, the abridgment of civil liberties, and outright lawbreaking in the White House; an indifference to environmental imperatives, including the energy conservation urgently needed to end America's chronic economic dependence on the congenitally unstable Middle East; and the promotion of America's homegrown religious fundamentalism with both official and political assaults on medical and earth science (including evolution) and the rights of gay Americans. (And that's just the short list.)

Well said, Mr. Rich, well said. ( )

4243 The Greatest Story Ever Sold The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, by Frank Rich (read 10 Dec 2006) Rich is a New York Times columnist who writes very good stuff. This book tells the story of the Bush presidency up to June 2006, is well-footnoted, and sets out the sorry events which have gotten us into the useless war going on in Iraq since March 2003 for which there is no end in sight. When Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein and he accurately stated that Iraq had no missiles outside the UN specifications, the Administration berated Rather for letting Saddam tell his "lies' on TV, when of course it was the Administration which was telling the falsities. This book cannot help but dismay anyone reading it since it so filled with sad truth. ( )