America (The Book)
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America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (ISBN 0446532681) is a 2004 humor book written and edited by Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, David Javerbaum, and other writers of The Daily Show. Karlin is the show's executive producer and Javerbaum its head writer. The book is written as a parody of a U.S. high school civics textbook, complete with study guides, questions, and class exercises. Its inside front cover is even "stamped" with a template (familiar to any student of American public schools) with the heading "THIS BOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF" and lines within a section marked "ISSUED TO" where the reader could write his or her name, the year, and the condition of the book when issued and when returned. The stamp also added, "We are fully aware that Dick Hertz, I.P. Freely and Heywood Jablome are not real people, so please exclude them." The book even provides discussion questions to mock history study guide books, with ridiculous questions such as: "Would you rather be a king or slave? Why or why not?" It pokes fun at the American political system and its flaws, including as a "class activity" the suggestion to "Disenfranchise a black student", and includes a chapter caricaturing American views of the rest of the world.
Appearing shortly before the 2004 U.S. presidential election, the book includes several pages of an "Election Guide" making fun of both candidates. Printings of the book made after the elections do not have this insert. Publishers Weekly (PW) chose it as its "Book of the Year"; it noted that "in a year defined by political polemics, it seems fitting that PW's Book of the Year be one in which the authors survey the entire political system and laugh." The audio book version won the Grammy Award in 2005 for "Best Comedy Album." It was also raved as "no other book has been more politically erect." The book, published in September 2004, remained a best seller even after the election.
In addition to America (The Audiobook), it has also spun-off into America (The Calendar).
Controversy
In Chapter 5, America (the Book) contains obviously-doctored photographs with the heads of current U.S. Supreme Court justices superimposed on appropriately aged naked bodies (taken from photos on a nudist website). An adjacent page invites the reader to cover each justice with a cutout of his or her robe to "restore their dignity." Some organizations found the images offensive and refused to carry the book. In a USA Today article, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman is quoted as saying the retailer canceled its order for America (the Book) because it "felt a majority of our customers would not be comfortable with the image". Some Mississippi public libraries removed the book from their shelves; the ban (which was mentioned on The Daily Show: "… there are libraries in Mississippi!?") was lifted the day after its issue because the library board had received numerous complaints.Cartoonist Bruce Tinsley's objection to the book's Mallard Fillmore parody found its way into the comic's July 5-8, 2005, editions, in which the title character argues that Jon Stewart "tried to deceive people into thinking" that the book's phony Fillmore was a real one by using the strip's name in conjunction with a fictitious date (October 1, 1998). [link]
Some Asian-American organizations criticized the book for a section called the "Color By Numbers Senate" which claimed that every US senator as of 2004 was white. [[Citing sources citation needed]] In fact, Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye, both of Hawaii were both senators in 2004, and the Senate has had at least one non-white member ever since 1959, when Hiram Fong was elected as one of Hawaii's first two senators. In addition, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Native American, was a senator from Colorado at the time.
In what may have been a joke, the conservative publication American Spectator named "America" the worst book of 2004.
Table of Contents
- Study Guide
- Foreword: by Thomas Jefferson
- Ch. 1: Democracy Before America
- Ch. 2: The Founding of America
- Ch. 3: The President: King of Democracy
- Ch. 4: Congress: Quagmire of Freedom
- Ch. 5: The Judicial Branch: It Rules
- Ch. 6: Campaigns and Elections: America Changes the Sheets
- Ch. 7: The Media: Democracy's Guardian Angels (retitled two pages later as "The Media: Democracy's Valiant Vulgarians")
- Ch. 8: The Future of Democracy: Four Score and Seven Years from Now
- Ch. 9: The Rest of the World: International House of Horrors
- Afterword
- Acknowledgments
- Credits
- Election 2004 (bonus section not listed in Table of Contents and not included in post-election printings)
External links
- [America (The Book)], official site
- [Behind the robes, Stewart finds controversy], from USA Today
- [American Spectator review]
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