Remember when everything was looking up? When the government was running at a surplus, pollution was disappearing, peace was breaking out in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century was strung with high-speed Internet cable and paved with 401K gold?

Well, so much for the future. Michael Moore, the award-winning provocateur behind "Roger & Me" and the bestseller "Downsize This!, " now returns to size up the new century -- and that big, ugly special-interest group that's laying waste to the world as we know it: stupid white men. Whether he's calling for United Nations action to overthrow the Bush Family Junta, calling on African-Americans to place whites only signs over the entrances of unfriendly businesses, or praying that Jesse Helms will get kissed by a man, "Stupid White Men" is Mike's Manifesto on Malfeasance and Mediocrity. Among his targets: George W.: ""President" of the United States. The Thief-in-Chief. A trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office. Send in the Marines! Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring me the head of Antonin Scalia!" Bill Clinton: "One of the best Republican presidents we've ever had." The Former Yugoslavia: "Bring back Marshall Tito! Nobody in America liked him much when he was alive, but now he looks like Lady Bird Johnson." The Idiot Nation: "A friggin' stain on a blue dress." That's "what captured our attention in the nineties --along with slow-moving Broncos, six-year-old strangled beauty queens, and Hugh Grant's dating habits." Corporate America: "There" is "no recession, my friends: no downturn, no hard times. The rich are wallowing in loot -- and now they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie."

The polls indicate that 60 percent of Americans are "upset or angry" about this land in which we now live -- a land where crooked courts select the president and money rules the day. So if you're feeling the same way and you're wondering what's going to give out first -- the economy, Dick Cheney's pacemaker, or your new VW Beetle -- here's the book for you.