Empire Burlesque

Front Cover

Back Cover

Spine

Synopsis

Chris Floyd is an American journalist. He writes the weekly Global Eye political column for The Moscow Times and St. Petersburg Times. <br> <br> His work also appears in The Ecologist, The Nation, CounterPunch, Christian Science Monitor, Bergen Record, Columbia Journalism Review and elsewhere around the world. He is the author of the book, Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime. His columns are featured each week on Bush Watch. <br> <br> He has been a writer and editor for more than 20 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. <br> <br> The book tells the tale in real-time: a view from the ground as it was happening, before the inevitable spin, revisionist history and public amnesia set in. It draws on the controversial weekly column he writes for The Moscow Times, the English-daily in Russia, and its sister paper, The St Petersburg Times. It also includes columns written for the leading American political journal, CounterPunch, as well as occasional pieces for The Ecologist in the UK, where he is a regular contributor, and The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review and many others. <br> <br> Woven together with new material to provide context and narrative continuity, the columns paint what he believes is a unique portrait of a vitally important historical process: the degradation of the American Republic, beginning here with the grim farce of Bush's appointment in the 2000 election and ending with the latest stories of atrocity, mayhem and fatal incompetence in Iraq. Although the subject matter is often grim, the pieces are written in vibrant prose, combining the urgency of journalism with an essayist's feel for language, mixing humour, satire, outrage and passion. <br> <br> Yet the book is not simply a jeremiad of partisan opinionating. It is rigorously fact-based, based on reputable, mainstream sources &ndash; although it uses the information gleaned from these sources to cut through the conventional wisdom and obfuscation, which they themselves so often convey. There is also a good deal of historical background to provide a deeper understanding of the whirlwind of current events.