They're All in It Together: Why Good Things Happen to Bad People

A collection of columns from the Des Moines (Iowa) Register and the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette from the past decade, this volume comes from a latter-day Swift who is a militant liberal, an aggressive secular humanist and an unabashed intellectual. The pieces will delight some readers and infuriate others. Kaul pulls no punches: he calls Reagan ``an amiable dunce, a yokel who takes pride in having lived a life uncorrupted by serious thought,'' and views Quayle as ``a childish, incoherent pip-squeak with the intellectual acuity of a geranium.'' Among other targets are the Pentagon and its handmaidens, Sam Nunn among them, who will not cut the defense budget; hunters and anglers who wax Hemingwayesque about their favorite pastime; people happy at the reunification of Germany; Texans; parents who choke up at the prospect of an empty nest; and experts whose lists of eminent villains do not include Vince Lombardi, J. Edgar Hoover, John Wayne and Billy Graham. This is controversial stuff but an undiluted joy to anyone who feels that the last 11 years represent a nadir in American society. (Nov.)