The Hammer: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress

A lively, hard-hitting biography of the pro-business, pro-Jesus, anti-government, anti-environment House majority leader who is driving today's congressional agenda.

With The Hammer, Lou Dubose and Jan Reid track the rise of Tom DeLay from owner of a pest control business to unremarkable, and hard-partying, Texas legislator (his nickname was "Hot Tub Tom"), to the congressional pinnacle of power. DeLay is the representative who has called the Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo of government," that he drove what he dubbed "The Campaign" to impeach Bill Clinton because Clinton lacked a "biblical worldview," that he didn't serve in Vietnam because too many minorities had signed up leaving no room for people like him, and recently stated any House adoption of a revised bill reinstating tax credits for poor families "ain't going to happen." DeLay is bold--a majority leader with extraordinary powers and extraordinary ambition--and whether he is maneuvering to redistrict Texas congressional seats or flying to Israel to critique the president, he uses that power to shape our politics here and abroad. It is time a proper introduction was made to this man, the only member of the House to keep half a dozen bullwhips on his office wall and a copy of the Ten Commandments on the windowsill.

Lou Dubose is the co-author, with Molly Ivins, of Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America and Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. He was the editor of the Texas Observer for eleven years. Jan Reid is an award-winning novelist and a senior writer for Texas Monthly. His most recent book is a much-praised memoir of Texas and Mexico, The Bullet Meant for Me, and, with Dubose and Carl M. Cannon, Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush.