Book Club: America (The Book)

America (The Book)

A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Warner Books, New York and Boston

I picked up this book from a used-book store near McMaster University, while I was in Hamilton visiting Carlo. It was a pretty famous book when it came out, just before the 2004 US presidential election.

Every damn page of this book is laugh-out-loud funny. Most of it is non-specific to 2004, so it's hilarious regardless of the names of the presidential contestants. The final few pages are printed on different paper, and feel like you're supposed to tear them out. They're pretty much the only part of the book that's really specific to 2004.

The foreword is by Thomas Jefferson, dead for more than 150 years, but apparently he "loves the mochachine". Each chapter is written and styled as if the book were a text for grade-school children, albiet with more use of the word "fuck".

I can't say much about America (The Book), since almost anything I say would be giving away one of the many, many jokes. I'll just end with the line on the bottom of the tear-out "Shadow Government" poster (go Gay Mafia!):

Many Bothans died to bring us this information