Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi set out for Washington in 2005 to find out how laws are made in twenty-first-century America, but soon realized there are two sides to this story: on one side, the Pit, a frivolous and isolated Congress where the laws are made; on the other, the howling madness of the rest of America, where the effects of our politics-of-the-absurd play out in real lives. To get at this wider story, he embeds himself with other key American institutions: the military, for a darkly humorous tour of duty in Baghdad; the left-wing resistance, where he joins (and antagonizes) the comically inept 9/11 truth movement; and finally, the Church, where he immerses himself with the true believers of an apocalyptic mega-church in Texas. He weaves these disparate strands into a lacerating and painfully comic portrait of a country losing its grip, from the core of its law-making machine to the wilds of Texas and the bomb-scarred streets of Baghdad. Perfect for an election year, and bound to provoke controversy, this is a scathingly funny, audaciously reported, and genuinely illuminating narrative of what America has become at the end of the Bush Era, from a major new voice in political journalism.