Not for everyone! 

A collection of essays that turns late–Cold War American politics into a demolition site. O’Rourke writes from inside the machinery—campaign trails, conventions, policy disasters—and reports back with a mix of satire and direct observation that refuses to separate ideology from its consequences. Reagan-era optimism, military adventurism, and free-market evangelism are all put in the cooker.

The book moves quickly across subjects—war, wealth, bureaucracy, media—tracking how political language inflates, distorts, and ultimately conceals the systems it claims to describe. O’Rourke’s position is deliberately unstable: participant, critic, and opportunist at once. 

The essays read now as both artefact and warning—less about a specific party than about the conditions that allow spectacle to pass for governance.

Picador paperback, first British edition (1987). Moderate shelf wear with visible creasing to covers and spine; edge wear and small scuffs present. Internally clean and intact with no inscriptions. Good condition.