Rating: 
Summary: Superb
Review: Krugman's analysis of the Bush administration is superb. He consistently backs his arguments with facts, and brings his book to us at the perfect time: it is excellent pre-election reading. Krugman does not tout a partisan viewpoint - he is simply analyzing facts that are already in the pubic domain, and comes to a very definite conclusion. This book is a convincing indictment of the Bush administration. If you aren't a fan of Bush, pick this book up, back your opinions with facts and supply yourself with ammunition. If you are a Bush sympathizer, pick up this book and refute Krugman's arguments. Go ahead -- I dare you to. I'd love to hear your reply. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up -- you won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: coherent chronology of the downfall
Review: The brilliant economist and NYTimes columnist has assembled a coherent collage of columns and essays that present a lucid and convincing argument that the Republican Party is on a fast track to dimantle government and "drown it in the bathtub," to use the words of Bush White House lobbyist Grover Norquist. The scary thing is how fast the unraveling is occurring; the hope is that Bush's plummetting approval ratings hint that America is waking up and saying "NO!" to the radical assault on the U.S. we all know and love.
Rating:
Summary: I agree
Review: I don't read the NY Times (the NY LIBERAL Times I guess the detractors of this book would say) regularly, so I reacted to the anti-Krugman factor and bought this book because of them. If you read only the introduction and preface, which apparently have not been printed in the ultra-liberal press, you still would see that we have a lot to worry about in this wonderful country. Why is it that so many people want to quash the truth that is reported by the various government agencies every day? Why do people have to say that Mr. Krugman is a proponent of bin-Laden to make people hate him? Why can't intelligent readers take a look at the content of this book alongside the anti-Clinton faction and decide for themselves? Isn't that what democracy is all about? I realize that democracy is so very close to demon-cracy, and maybe that's the real issue.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks
Review: The bleating of right-wing reviewers was enough to make this book worth buying. Reading it makes one understand why they're so apopleptic. Krugman confirms what many of us have long suspected about the Bush agenda, backing his conclusions with clear logic and indisputable facts. It's no wonder the neocon response is largely limited to screaming "liberal liar." Of course, Krugman isn't really a liberal, but he disagrees with the right, so he earns its all-purpose epithet for dissent. Ignore it. If you're undecided about which way Bush is taking the United States, buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Yet another Leftist Liar
Review: Anyone who trusts or believes what Paul Krugman says simply needs to go to NationalReview online and look for the "Krugman Truth Squad", who's chief author is Donald Luskin. If he doesn't have a current article - and he usually has to do one long one per week to correct the misquotes, statistical errors (usually misstatements, actually), contradictions and outright lies by Krugman - look for 'Luskin' under "Find an Author" if you don't see a current article. It's always revealing and often hilarious. These are not disagreements about a degree of economic policy - these are clear revelations of outright lies and deceptions.Conservatives will see the extent to which Krugman constantly lies, while liberals won't even bother to look for the truth. He's as big a liar as are Michael Moorer and that twerp Al Franken. See for yourself and then decide for yourself. Or stick your head back in the sand. A truly revealing moment was when Krugman was being interviewed by Tim Russert who asked him about some of his misstatements and about the people who had to correct him constantly online. After about a 30 second pause and grimace, he whined about how his every word is being evaluated - which if he was honest, wouldn't be a problem. He even responds to SOME of the refutations on his website (which of course leads to a whole new round of corrections), but never corrects the admitted "misstatements" in the New York Times - which obviously doesn't have a problem with lies on the front page or on the editorial page. He's completely dishonest.
Rating:
Summary: Krugman's Shrill Diatribe
Review: How conveniently Krugman manages to lay virtually every problem in this country squarely on George Bush and how conveniently he also manages to totally ignore everything the Clintons and their administration did to get us where we are. Too bad there's not a 0-star rating. I wouldn't line my birdcage with paper from this book.
Rating:
Summary: If you hate George W. read this book
Review: Otherwise don't bother. Former economist Krugman sees what he wants to see and little else. One need not be a conservative to find Krugman's opinions absurd. [I don't hate George W., but then I didn't hate Bill Clinton either.]
Rating: 
Summary: Read Preface and Introduction, Skip the Rest
Review:
The book is worth buying for the Preface and Introduction alone. The rest of the book is a somewhat irritating replay of every column the author has ever written, and not nearly as well done or as riveting as, say, Tom Friedman's replays in "Longitudes & Attitudes". However, if you have not read the author's columns, his bite-size descriptions of irrational exuberance, crony capitalism, the failure of the Federal Reserve, fuzzy math, how markets go bad, and global spoilage, then they are all certainly worth browsing.
The Preface has three core ideas: 1) the elites are ruling badly and not beneficially for the majority of the population including all the voters and most of the stockholders; 2) politicians and corporation chiefs are getting away with blatant lies to the public because of a media that avoids critical inquiry; and 3) open sources of information--all that lies in the public domain--are more than adequate for anyone to get a grip on reality. The Introduction is a bit scarier and more pointed. The author joins Mark Hertsgaard, author of "The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World" in suggesting that the radical right is creating nothing less than a Reichstag in America. In the author's view, and he quotes Kissinger in chilling terms, the radical right is a revolutionary power that is very deliberately and with malice at all times, rejecting and undermining the democratic rules of the game. In the author's words, the radical right is "a movement whose leaders do not accept the legitimacy of our current political system." The author goes so far as to suggest that the radical right considers elections as "only a formality" and that they will do anything--including subversion of the Constitution--to "win" those elections and reap the domestic and foreign "looting rights." Disclosure: I used to be a conservative Republican and used to think such ideas were simply over the top. I have been radicalized by the last 200 books I have read (and reviewed on Amazon) and I have to say, while the third of the nation that is close-minded and ideologically-blindered on the right may give the author short shrift, the other two thirds--the drop-outs and splinter parties, and the failing Democrats--they should take Krugman very seriously. He is an economist, teaching at Princeton, not a journalist nor a sensationalist, and in my view, when one combines his book with that of Clyde Prestowitz, a Presbyterian elder and solid Reagan Republican and fiscal conservative ("Rogue Nation"), with that of William Greider, writing on the immorality and social costs of capitalism as we practice it today ("Soul of Capitalism"), one can only conclude that the Republic, and that for which it stands, have been hijacked, are being looted, and the American Democratic experiment is on very thin ice. The index to this book is helpful in running down specific individuals, corporation, and organizations that have committed crimes against the Nation that the author has addressed in his many columns for the New York Times, as repeated in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Truth before an administration of liars
Review: Rich white men are putting billions in their pockets and charging it on your and my credit cards in the form of their several trillion in deficits. To help their cause, they're killing our children in Iraq to make us think there's a real war on so we won't pay attention to the remnants of what used to be an economy. Krugman should be sainted for having the courage to tell it like it is as he fearlessly does, with empirical proof in evidence, in this captivating and devastatingly frightening book. As Krugman points out, the Bush/Cheney crew wages war so it can pick our pockets, and attacks as traitorously anti-American any citizen who points it out. And many of us unthinking Americans fall for it and vote for him and his right-wing cronies, as we pick up our food stamps, pore through the "help-wanted"s in a futile effort to find a good job, just praying we don't get sick, because health insurance for us is as impossibly unaffordable as Arnold's Hummer. This is a vitally important political and economic book because it tells the truth about this, the most sinister president and administration in anyone's memory. Krugman demonstrates, indeed proves with numbers found in Bush's own reports how Cheney/Grover Norquist's vision will decimate Social Security, Medicare, education, health care and any hope for the dreams of little guy in America. Even more frightening, he shows how this has been the administration's explicit plan all along: starve the government away by taking the money and running. As Bush's key behind-the-scenes conservative strategist, Norquist explains "My goal is to to get the government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." It sounds hyperbolic and almost ridiculous, but a quick visit to Norquist's website will confirm everything Krugman reveals. And unbelievably, even as irretrievably destructive as their vision is to 99% of the population, so many of us Americans are falling for it, hook, line and sinker, as these guys raise a false flag to hide their actions and put our soldiers out to take bullets and give the nightly news something to talk about. Krugman is the most highly qualified and, in this Bush/Rumsfeld world where "if you don't see it our way, you must be a terrorist", certainly the most courageous patriot to tell it like it is, and fortunately for us all has the intellect to show what it means for our country, and to demonstrate what little will be left of the good ol' US when these domestically elected evil-doers have had their way. Because as Krugman shows, the terrorists ain't got nothin' on the Bush/Cheney Klan when it comes to doing damage to America. And as no one can deny, the news and the economy prove Krugman's prescient statements every day.
Rating:
Summary: Let's be unlike the White House and tell the truth
Review: If I had time I would refute the ridiculous lies and distortions in the multitude of one-star reviews below mine, strangely enough mostly from New York. Just to start, the excellent NY Times Magazine article Mr. Krugman wrote recently was NOT an excerpt from this book but a long, beautifully reasoned examination of the devastating impact of Mr. Bush's previous and upcoming tax cuts. Other comments are rife with mistakes as well, but they were obviously placed on this forum to keep the American taxpayer and voter from knowing the truth. If many of them weren't out looking for the 2.6 million jobs that have been lost since Mr. Bush's last tax cut, perhaps they would have time to write their own comments about the broken promises of the president and his cabinet ministers. Mr. Krugman tells the truth based on the depressing data of the administration itself. His critics have sadly forgotten what that looks like.
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