2009 books
4) Alistair Beaton, A Planet for the President, 2004
I've had this a while, bought probably at the height of my displeasure against Bush, but have been saving it for the right time. Now was indeed a good time, when the Bush nightmare is all but over and we can look back at the some of the highly unpleasant excesses of the last eight years and marvel that everyone, not least the US itself, has somehow muddled through. Bush may have been a major part of the inspiration behind this, but the excesses of the Bush Gang are as nothing compared to the adminstration of President Fletcher J. Fletcher that is depicted in this satire, when he is persuaded by his staff that there are just far too many people on this planet, and that the great majority of them are Not American and therefore could justifiably be eradicated to preserve humanity's long-term future. The President portrayed is actually more 70% Reagan and 30% Bush, which was a pity though there are several post-9/11 and post-Iraq jabs in the right direction, and a chilling piece of prediction is the complete destruction of New Orleans by a Category 5 hurricane, written a year before Katrina. Not a bad read at all but not as consistently laugh-out-loud as I'd hoped - we've have eight years of The Onion to give us that.