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I admit that I did not, like a responsible reviewer, sit down and read ''America (The Book)'' straight through from its ''Foreword by Thomas Jefferson'' -- ''Is it true Halle Berry is once again single?'' -- to the end. Instead, I did what any sane consumer would: jumped in at random and let the book have its way with me until the candy-store shelves were empty. That's how I can confirm that plenty of things in it will make you snort on second or even third reading. I became especially fond of Samantha Bee, author of ''Would You Mind if I Told You How We Do It in Canada?,'' and her obsessively timid explanations of how they do things up north. Then there's the map of a future Washington, in which the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been made cheerier by adding the plot summaries of all 224 episodes of ''Friends.'' Or this comparison between executive and legislative branches, which has the extra merit of being perfectly accurate: ''If the president is the head of the American body politic, Congress is its gastrointestinal tract.''
As with ''The Daily Show'' itself, the book's artfulness is in maintaining a balance between pointed satire of the political travesties and media bamboozling Americans should be fed up with and the sort of sublime silliness that implies equanimity. Nothing here is as savage as David Rees's comic strip, ''Get Your War On,'' that glorious excoriation of our post-9/11 loony bin. Nor does the book include anything as oddly beautiful as the coda to The Onion's compendium ''Our Dumb Century,'' a superficially cruel, inexplicably touching news item fantasizing a nursing-home squabble between Ronald Reagan and Muhammad Ali. But the book's satiric comprehensiveness is unequaled -- it really is a parody survey of the whole ball of wax -- and the silliness is often a joy. What looks like one of its most puerile jokes is actually among its most profound: color photographs (presumably fabricated, but we can dream) of all nine Supreme Court justices naked.
Deeper in the woodwork, it's hard not to dote on all the allusions that, as good Americans, we're expected to spot without nudging, of which the funniest is the tribute to ''The Godfather'' that places ''Barzini, a legitimate craftsman from Rhode Island,'' among the Constitution's framers. The zaniest is the tip that what we know as the Supreme Court was originally named ''Trimalchio in West Egg'' (Fitzgerald's working title for ''The Great Gatsby''). The sweetest is the discreet shout-out to the legendary jazz eccentric Bob Dorough, beloved by unwitting millions for the educational ditties on ''Schoolhouse Rock.''
Dorough also belongs here, because the book's ultimate joke -- on our educational system, if not us in general -- is that it's not only more informative about how American government and culture work than the textbooks it burlesques, but gives us a keener sense of having a stake in both. So what if it's by a TV comic and his stable of wiseacre cronies? Dan Rather has been my favorite comedian for decades, and while I'd have to give him the edge over Stewart on laughs, he isn't nearly as perceptive. Not to sound like Samantha Bee, but could I please be the first to nominate ''America (The Book)'' for this year's history Pulitzer?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/books/review/03CARSONL.html?oref=login
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