Only in America
Subtitle: inside the mind and under the skin of the nation everyone loves to hate
By: by Matt Frei
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2008
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 330
ISBN-13: 9780007248926; 9780007265060
Subjects: Politics and government; Social conditions; Social life and customs; Manners and customs; Politik och forvaltning; Sociala forhallanden
Description: "Matt Frei, the BBC's Washington correspondent, goes under the skin of the nation's capital to discover the paradox of the world's last remaining superpower. Imagine a city so rich that it spends 150 million dollars a year on corporate lunches, dinners and fundraisers and yet so poor that its streets are frequently as potholed as those of any forgotten backwater in the developing world. A city that deploys more armed officers per square mile than any other in the world but has earned the title of being its country's murder capital. A city where 565 elected Congressmen and Senators are chased, charmed, cajoled and sometimes bribed by 35,000 registered lobbyists; where the most illustrious resident travels with a fleet of planes and a small army of body guards but where the mayor for 12 years was a convicted crack addict who believed that every law in his own country was racist, 'including the law of gravity'. A city that plays host to seventeen different spying agencies, employing 23,000 agents, none of whom were able to discover a plot that involved flying civilian airliners into buildings, even though the plotters had littered their path with clues. Hard to imagine? Welcome to Washington DC: the Rome of the 21st century."--Global Books in Print.
Notes: Includes index.

Map on lining papers.