Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire - Softcover

Taibbi, Matt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802170412 ISBN 13: 9780802170415

Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007

Synopsis

Smells Like Dead Elephants is a brilliant collection from Matt Taibbi, a political reporter with the gonzo spirit that made Hunter S. Thompson and P. J. O’Rourke so much fun” (The Washington Post). Bringing together Taibbi’s most incisive and hilarious work from his Road Work” column in Rolling Stone, Smells Like Dead Elephants shines an unflinching spotlight on the corruption, dishonesty, and sheer laziness of our leaders. Taibbi has plenty to say about George W. Bush, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and all the rest, but he doesn’t just hit inside the Beltway. He gets involved in the action, infiltrating Senator Conrad Burns’s birthday party under disguise as a lobbyist for a fictional oil firm that wants to drill in the Grand Canyon. He floats into apocalyptic post-Katrina New Orleans in a dinghy with Sean Penn. He goes to Iraq as an embedded reporter, where he witnesses the mind-boggling dysfunction of our occupation and spends three nights in Abu Ghraib prison. And he reports from two of the most bizarre and telling trials in recent memory: California v. Michael Jackson and the evolution-vs.-intelligent-design trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Equally funny and shocking, this is excellent work from one of our most entertaining writers.

About this title

About the Author

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone.

Review

"Extremely funny and breathtaking in his ferocity."

"Certainly the funniest...look at the [2004 presidential] campaign."

From "one of the funniest and most honest American political journalists"

"A political reporter with the gonzo spirit that made Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke so much fun...Taibbi also exhibits a fairly sophisticated knowledge of the inner workings of Congress."

"Taibbi may be the only political writer in America that matters."

"The funniest angry book and the angriest funny book since Hunter S. Thompson roared into town."

"Matt Taibbi is one of the few journalists I read because I want to, not because I have to. His detached contempt is pitch perfect. He'll piss you off and make you laugh out loud, usually within the space of a single paragraph."

"Not so much a campaign diary as it is a compelling, and somewhat chaotic, mix of reporting, anecdote, social commentary, and rant. In each piece, Taibbi's rage and humor bleeds through, making this a vivid and very personal critique of both politics and the mainstream journalists who cover it....It's hard not to be engrossed by the eccentric characters, entertaining scenarios, and rich details that drive [Taibbi's] stories."

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0802170412
• ISBN 13: 9780802170415
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288