This book taught me many things. It taught me that American History and Government is very boring. It taught me that even an hilarious parody of American History and Government cannot make the subject interesting. It taught me that it's not easy to get a good posed picture of an eagle. It also taught me that I am even more ignorant of popular culture than I think I am because there were some jokes I didn't get. I also learned that Stephen Colbert can look adorable in almost anything, even sadomasochism leathers.

The book is a spoof of text books and a scathing social satire at the same time. The writers and editors were brilliantly creative, using a plethora of different ways (without using Powerpoint) to convey information to make us laugh. Edward R. Tufte would be proud. There were charts, graphs, maps, photos, polls, a pull out poster, discussion questions, sidebars, quotes, forms, games, paper dolls, drawings, scans, quizzes, even a flip book. Visually, the book was extremely appealing. The jokes were fresh and funny and I even laughed out loud at times.

But American History is still boring.

Don't get me wrong: there's some very funny stuff here. But I had expected more.

The book is formatted like a high school textbook, and even has the rubber stamp "issued to" on the inside cover with at least one zinger in it. We are therefore forewarned to read everything, including marginal notes, footnotes, photo credits, to see if they are serious or not. Mostly, they are not. Among my favorites are the marginal "Were you aware?" comments, including such gems as "During the average president's first four-year term, he spends 1,241 days figuring out how to get a second four-year term." Do the math.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, is sacred here. There is a foreword by Thomas Jefferson, charts and diagrams of all sorts, most of which do make a point, although not always the one the title suggests. But there's also a picture of what is purported to be the Supreme Court naked, and a collection of gowns with which to "restore the dignity of the court."

The "senior correspondents" make their contribution, including Stephen Colbert, who now has his own show, and Samantha Bee who does her self-effacing comments from the Canadian perspective. The first two-thirds or so of the book would rate at least four stars. But it falls off by the time we get to the chapter on America of the future, goes even further down hill through "the rest of the world" segment, and is largely bitter irony by the time you get to the part about the 2004 election. When it was new, this might have been funny; I couldn't say. I was rooting for the Libertarians that year.

Yes, it's funny, and there are some valuable insights and zingers here. But much of it is also pretty adolescent in style. I think the Daily Show has matured significantly since this book was written.

This was a quick read, I hate politics and find it boring and full of nonsensical bull****, but I enjoyed this book and even though it is full of slanderous lies I feel I have learnt quite a bit. It also raises some important questions like

"If con is the opposite of pro, then is congress the opposite of progress?"

Most interesting to me was the layout of the judicial system, from lower courts to the Supreme court, all previous knowledge on this subject was gained from watching Boston Legal, I now have a deeper understanding of their treatment of judges.

Give this book a go and soon you'll be just like me and ready to start your own democracy, as the final words in the book say..."Just smash the concepts laid out in this book together and you'll already have something better than North Korea". Who's with me?

This book is hilarious. It's well-written, the pictures are great and it's just really good comedy. My only knock on this book would be that it is very thick. It's funny but did take me a while to read through because it's big and just has so much information.