The Legend of Bushistotle: History's Greatest Philosopher-Warrior-King

It's one of the funniest books I've ever read. Witty and slapstick at the same time. Totally worth the $0.39 I spent on it!!!!

Only the rare novel manages to combine a sharp sense of humor with fast action and still serve as a modern-day allegory. Steven Hanley manages that task in "The Legend of Bushistotle," and he appears to do it with consummate ease. Steve is approached by email to take up a position as a librarian at the Vatican in order to translate a newly found ancient manuscript on Bushistotle -"History's Greatest Philosopher-Warrior-King." Living in ancient Athens, the manuscript says, Bushistotle was known for his catchphrase "I'm a uniter, not a divider," but also for his penchant to destroy nations and foster "progressive live-and-let-live policies as he and only he could define them: out with the bad guys and in with the good." But the project is more Top Secret than it first appears to be, and Steve soon finds himself inducted into Cardinal Bernie Lei's Task Force B.S. project and held hostage inside the Vatican. The authorities also instruct him to translate the Greek manuscript with the specific purpose of speeding along Bushistotle's beatification. However, "cleaning up Bushistotle's record (and) spinning his pathetic history in a positive light to make him seem like a saint" is no easy task, considering that Bushistotle's follies included invading Persia in retaliation for a Spartan terrorist attack on the Athenian colony in Syracuse, Sicily. Hanley cleverly switches between the past and the present, detailing the excesses of Bushistotle even as Steve struggles to extricate himself from his dilemma. Throughout the plot runs Hanley's distinctive brand of wit; officials at the Vatican, for example, are called Irma R. Gorgonzola and Sister Mary Subjugation, and the ancient Athenian manuscript has been partly ruined because attempts have been made to clean it with Windex! The names of the other characters - Bushistotle, his wife Constantina, and his coterie of advisors: Cheneyon, Rumsfeldiavelli, Powellonius, and Ashcroftus - are just as captivating. But in the midst of this political satire, Hanley also manages to weave in a riveting storyline, speeding it along in the end towards an absorbing, truly satisfying finish.

Perfectly satirizes G. W. Bush and the religious right, depecting them as the bumbling fools and hypocrites they really are, but that the world is just waking up to. We've been fooled long enough - about WMD's, about stealth Supreme Court nominees, about Rove and that bunch - but it's a lot better to belly laugh at them than it is to cry about them, even though that's what most of the country feels like doing.