As this book is a political commentary on current events, I feel obligated to let the reader of this review know my personal political biases: I am a registered independent and consider myself as a classical liberal in the tradition of John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson. I find myself at times strongly disliking both the Republican and Democratic parties and am not politically involved with any political parties or candidates. If your political views are considerably different from my own, I must warn you that you may have a very different reaction to this book than I did. Also, while I am very interested in American politics and follow them closely, I don’t listen to any talk radio programs, watch any TV news or commentary programs, or read any politically-oriented blogs.
This last disclaimer is important for this work because this book is a compilation of blog posts written a self-proclaimed neoconservative Jewish blogger who goes by the Internet handle “eric the Tygrrrr Express.” (Yes, he insists on the lower case “e,” like a latter-day e. e. cummings.) His full blog (from which these excerpts are presumably drawn) is available at http://www.tygrrrrexpress.com/ I visited his site in preparation for this review, but I had never visited the blog prior to reading the book. I received an autographed copy of this book as a gift from someone who (I believe) met the author at a Republican event. The blog entries are undated but we are told that they mainly come from 2007-08, so while most are still relevant, this is a book that is highly perishable and will not age particularly well. In fact, eric says almost nothing about Obama, though he does share his thoughts in detail on Hillary Clinton and all the 2008 Republican nominees.
The book does at times descend to polemics, but in many of the pieces, eric at least gives lip service to maintaining a higher-minded tone. In others, he makes no attempt to do so. He can be very funny at times, and that certainly enlivens what could otherwise have been a potentially tedious or annoying read. Not all of the columns are hits, as some are simply discussions of the various female political commentators eric is lusting after or his thoughts on the NFL, but the vast majority offers at least some interesting commentary.
I found several of the book’s topics particularly useful and/or interesting, particularly his discussions of “ideological bigotry” (i.e., hatred of those who have a different political ideology from oneself) and how pervasive this is in political debates (I would argue that it certainly exists across the American political spectrum). That’s a problem that we all need to be aware of and fight against. I differ with eric on some of the issues: he is almost unstinting in his praise of George W. Bush (there is certainly room for plenty of criticism, in my view) and he oversimplifies the Arab-Israeli dispute (eric is rabidly pro-Israel), for example. I would also describe eric as more of a Republican ideologue than he might care to admit.
I generally enjoyed the book – it certainly wasn’t a waste of my time – but it’s also not the kind of book I would have ever purchased for myself. It’s a mix of politics and humor, and I’d have preferred it if the humor had been deemphasized, plus, to be honest, many of the columns’ topics (the 2008 presidential race) have been overcome by events. I give it 2.5 stars out of 5.
Los miembros de LibraryThing mejoran los autores combinando sus nombres y sus obras, separando los nombres de autores homónimos en identidades distintas, y más.
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This last disclaimer is important for this work because this book is a compilation of blog posts written a self-proclaimed neoconservative Jewish blogger who goes by the Internet handle “eric the Tygrrrr Express.” (Yes, he insists on the lower case “e,” like a latter-day e. e. cummings.) His full blog (from which these excerpts are presumably drawn) is available at http://www.tygrrrrexpress.com/ I visited his site in preparation for this review, but I had never visited the blog prior to reading the book. I received an autographed copy of this book as a gift from someone who (I believe) met the author at a Republican event. The blog entries are undated but we are told that they mainly come from 2007-08, so while most are still relevant, this is a book that is highly perishable and will not age particularly well. In fact, eric says almost nothing about Obama, though he does share his thoughts in detail on Hillary Clinton and all the 2008 Republican nominees.
The book does at times descend to polemics, but in many of the pieces, eric at least gives lip service to maintaining a higher-minded tone. In others, he makes no attempt to do so. He can be very funny at times, and that certainly enlivens what could otherwise have been a potentially tedious or annoying read. Not all of the columns are hits, as some are simply discussions of the various female political commentators eric is lusting after or his thoughts on the NFL, but the vast majority offers at least some interesting commentary.
I found several of the book’s topics particularly useful and/or interesting, particularly his discussions of “ideological bigotry” (i.e., hatred of those who have a different political ideology from oneself) and how pervasive this is in political debates (I would argue that it certainly exists across the American political spectrum). That’s a problem that we all need to be aware of and fight against. I differ with eric on some of the issues: he is almost unstinting in his praise of George W. Bush (there is certainly room for plenty of criticism, in my view) and he oversimplifies the Arab-Israeli dispute (eric is rabidly pro-Israel), for example. I would also describe eric as more of a Republican ideologue than he might care to admit.
I generally enjoyed the book – it certainly wasn’t a waste of my time – but it’s also not the kind of book I would have ever purchased for myself. It’s a mix of politics and humor, and I’d have preferred it if the humor had been deemphasized, plus, to be honest, many of the columns’ topics (the 2008 presidential race) have been overcome by events. I give it 2.5 stars out of 5.
Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers… (más)