It’s hunting season in the woods of northern Michigan and the deer in the journalistic sights of our author from Flint (where the cars once came from) is none other that a certain George W Bush, President of the United States. Or, as Michael Moore likes to call him, the “President” — for in his opinion the 2000 election was stolen through the help of Dubya’s brother, Jeb, his cousin, his dad, his dad’s cronies and tame judges. This startling claim (of “a very American coup”) is the basis for Moore’s first essay in this angry, funny, at times sad, usually insightful book. Moore, a documentary filmmaker who seeks through sometimes savage satire to pick at the obsessions and foibles of Americans (he has just won a best-documentary Oscar for Bowling for Columbine) and the plight of the “little guy” in USA Incorporated (Roger and Me), contends that the 2000 election was subject to considerable political manipulation: in Florida, suspected former felons (mostly black Democrats) were removed from the voters’ roll — this before the revelation to the world of a new kind of political obstetrics, the “pregnant chad”. The Republican-run sections of the mass media — led in particular by a cousin of Dubya himself — later played up the claim that Al Gore’s dispute over the Florida result was the work of a political spoiler. Moreover, the Supreme Court, whose ruling ultimately led to Dubya’s victory, was loaded with Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr appointees. This, and the fact that Gore convincingly won the popular vote (but lost because of the states-based Electoral College system), points to the need perhaps for some electoral reform. Yet, in fairness, Moore also addresses what might be called the Nader factor. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader certainly lost Gore-needed votes in key states, a fact not helped by the fact that the Greens seemed unwilling (according to Moore) to encourage supporters in swing states to back Gore rather than let Bush win the needed electoral college votes. Moore — whose politics is unashamedly close to the Greens and the left of the Democratic Party — had argued with leading Naderites to do just this, and failed. Moore’s vitriolic humour is directed regularly at Dubya and his Cabinet — all of them, he argues, extreme right-wingers completely in with big business (especially oil) and out of touch with the common person. Yet Moore’s essays move beyond this broadside against Bush and the Republicans, taking on such topics as white racism, poor education, ecological destructiveness, prison conditions, legal inequalities and violation of (constitutional) human rights, and even men as a species (doomed to extinction unless they get with the programme, he argues). Even Gore and the Democrats come under our hunter from Flint’s fire — for what he sees as too much compromise, lack of nerve or political imagination. He also puts in a strong plea for sanity ‒ not gung ho aggression — in US foreign policy and for negotiated peace in war-torn societies.This may sound like a rather “heavy-assed” book (to use an American turn of phrase), and so it could be were it not for Moore’s offbeat humour and acute dramatic irony. Moore is a kind of cross between the great 18th-century pamphleteer Tom Paine and Monty Python, writing to the music of Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. The book is very “American” in its interests, but should be read by a wider audience not only because the issues he raises affect (directly and indirectly) the lives of the planet, but also because Moore writes so well, and with such civic passion. He is a citizen who takes his citizenship seriously: not retreating into his metaphorical cabin in the woods, not prepared to let politicians get away with anything. We need more people like him — and not just in the US either!What is ironic is the fact that the US edition — due out in mid-September 2001 — was almost suppressed by the publisher (not Penguin, one must stress) after September 11: too unpatriotic, they said. Pressure groups on the Internet forced the publishers to reverse their decision and the book became a bestseller in the US. Strength to their modems, say I.