{"product_id":"9780997615814","title":"National Parks","description":"In the near future, Congress, through gridlock, inactivity, and disastrous economic policies, has brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy. As a way to generate money needed to avoid default, Congress plans to sell the national parks to the highest bidders. Three strong women intend to stop them.\u003cp\u003eDisguised as a semi-dystopian look at America in a few years, this is a delicious satirical send-up of the beltway culture, a paean to our national parks, and an exposition of characters, hilarious, irritating, and very human, who struggle in the Washington web. The author extends current political idiocies to their reasonable, logical, and hilarious conclusions. Along the way, he offers surprising predictions of how current and proposed inventions will affect our future lives. Some of those predictions are happening even sooner than the author expected. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany of the characters that inhabit the pages of National Parks are instantly and indelibly recognizable. Noble and base, they mirror our highest aspirations and lowest common denominators. The author mixes them all in a froth of comic conflict.\u003cbr\u003eThe director of the national parks, Agatha Jackson, collaborates with green defense lawyer, Portia Merson, to defeat the assault on the parks. Tureen O'Porto, a beautiful lobbyist of questionable moral character, joins forces with the parks' defenders, not realizing her actions could be fatal. Opposing them is, among others, Senator Deborah Hatchett, who has her own less than honorable reasons for pursuing the sale.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere are a lobbyist with a secret toe fetish, a computer genius who creates an x-rated video avatar game, a Chinese gangster looking for respectability, an industrialist intending to dam the Grand Canyon and sell high-priced water to California, corrupt legislators, and, of course, lusty heroines, birth, death, and betrayal .\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn other words, business as usual.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Frogworks Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47021364347120,"sku":"9780997615814","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780997615814_p0.jpg?v=1763942592","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780997615814","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}