The Bottom Line
- I Am America is often laugh out loud funny
- The book is so densely packed with gags it can be better read in short bursts.
Description
- Stephen Colbert translates his popular TV show into a book.
- I Am America details Stephen Colbert’s worldview on a wide variety of topics
- The book is very funny, but makes you realize some jokes work better on television
Guide Review - I Am America (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert - Book Review
The character Stephen Colbert is modeled on right-wing television pundits like Bill O'Reilly, and he's taken the uber-patriotic, uber-conservative bent and applied it to topics ranging from science ("We weren't put on this planet to question our environment, we were put here to process it into fuel for our cars.") to class ("Class is a way of looking at society that divides people into different categories based on how much money they're willing to make.") to religion, one of the funniest chapters in the book.
Stephen Colbert is even more self-aggrandizing than he is conservative, which means the back jacket features a picture of him reading his own book with a blurb from him praising his own book. Silver medallion stickers allow you to bestow "The Stephen Colbert Award for Literary Excellence" as you see fit--he has already placed one on the cover of his book.
There are plenty of laugh out loud jokes in I Am America, but reading it can also be exhausting, between the main text, margin notes, and footnotes--too many densely packed jokes gets old. That said, the transcript of Stephen Colbert's infamous White House Correspondents' Dinner speech might itself be worth the price of the book.
