America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

by Jon Stewart and the writers of the Daily Show

I wasn't sure what I was going to get with America:The Book when I bought it... I could have, but I didn't even bother to open up the cover and peek inside before I plunked my debit card on the counter and stuffed the book into my bag. The cashier looked a little nervous that I had already done that before the transaction was even completed but whether I could afford to or not I was taking that book home.

I flipped through the pages on the streetcar home, my curiosity getting the better of me. Was this going to be a compilation of Daily Show skits in script form? Was it going to be Onion-esque fake newstories or perhaps parodies of real ones? Was it going to be a satirical novel, or a series of essays, or a fake biography of an anthropomorphized land mass?
What I saw confused me ... lots of pictures and sidebars, and two-page spreads with pixellated images. It wasn't until I actually dove into it (or perhaps read the faux-quotes on the back cover) that I realized it was a satirical text book.

If only all text books were like this, perhaps I would have actually read them when I was in school.

There are many terms that can be used to describe the book, all of them rather contrived like "biting", "sharp", "edgy", "scathing" etc. but they're not necessary. If you 've been watching the Daily Show on a regular basis then you know the type of commentary you're going to get, only instead of it beind about the recent news it's instead rolling through the origin of the United States of America, examining the constitution, the government, the legal system, the media and the world that, naturally, revolves around it.

The great thing about the book is its ability to take the piss out of the "rah rah America" attitude without being completely defamatory... it's not completely Liberal and it's definitely not conservative (it's got the Supreme Court justices nekkid!), it tows a good line between. It's not trying to say that America isn't a good place, it's trying to say that there are too many things wrong with it that can be better corrected. As a textbook, it does exactly what it's supposed to do - it educates and informs, but it does it in a hilarious manner that makes it go down so much easier.

The one problem is there are no answers to the questions posed. There are a lot of fallacies pointed out regarding the way American society is today and how the people in power positions are twisting the system to no end without any sort of commentary on how to correct it. But then they are comedy writers so really perhaps it's too much to expect from them... and it's really too much to complain about.

It's a engaging, insightful and highly amusing book, no recommended for use as an actual history text though.