A group member has this to say about this
book:
I took this book with me to Northern California on my recent trip up there, and just finished it as my plane was landing back in San Diego yesterday. I enjoyed it, and it has a number of stories that illustrate how wacky most of the American public has become, and what servile panderers so many of our politicians are nowadays.
Pierce's retelling of James Madison's insights into democratic government is worth the read in and of itself. The chapters on the story of the recent "second Skopes trial" in Dover, Pennsylvania, the death of Terri Shiavo, the self-deception of the Bush administration in the lead-up to the War in Iraq were particularly engrossing. The sham science put forth to confuse the issue of global warming was too.
After a while, though, the "crank motif" got a bit tedious, I thought, and the chapters on Ignatius Donnelly's search for Atlantis and WLAC's popularization of black rythm and blues were far from riveting. But overall, Idiot America was a profitable read.
One nugget that shouldn't be overlooked: Pierce's "Notes on Sources" at book's end lists the titles of books he used as source material, a list we might consider mining for titles for future book club selections.
No comments:
Post a Comment