Book review of a New York Times bestseller

NYT Bestseller

The title of Glenn Beck's and Kevin Balfe's an Inconvenient Book spoofs Al Gore's an Inconvenient Truth and also challenges many of the former Vice President's assumptions about global warming. Moreover, Beck and Balfe lambaste the liberal political perspective on many issues including political correctness and welfare. An obvious platform for spouting their viewpoints, an Inconvenient Book is blatantly opinionated and unabashedly conservative. Like Beck's radio talk show and his hour-long program on CNN, an Inconvenient Book provides entertaining and sometimes enervating mental fodder. The book need not be read by those who agree with Beck; in fact it may even be more enlightening for those who want to throw tomatoes at their television when he comes on the air.

Written for a general audience, the language in the book is straightforward and unfettered by any jargon. In fact, Beck and Balfe almost seem to talk down to their audience. Their image of the American public is colored by their own belief systems, as when they make assumptions about the religious or cultural character of the nation. However, such oversights can be forgiven, considering that the book is not intended to be a scholastic overview of the nation but rather a bandwagon serving certain political ends. An Inconvenient Book must be approached as good, solid entertainment and not as a reference book. The subtitle of the book is "real solutions to the world's biggest problems," but how real those solutions are remains to be seen.

Beck and Balfe are brutal on issues like poverty in America, which the authors insist is due to laziness and not to the failure of the American Dream. Clinging to outmoded views like theirs, readers who do believe that poor people simply to not work hard enough will cheer on Beck and Balfe while others will want to use the book as a dart to throw when Glenn Beck is next on TV. What Beck and Balfe fail to recognize is the inconvenient truth of statistics showing that European countries are leagues ahead of the United States on basic but quantifiable quality of life factors ranging from measures like access to education and health care or income disparity. Beck and Balfe love to rant about the French and it becomes painfully obvious their tantrum is rooted in jealousy. The authors spew what many readers will recognize as a 1980s mentality: blind pursuit of the American Dream in spite of its failure to nurture a large portion of the nation's citizens. As predicted, Beck and Balfe rage against anything slightly resembling socialized medicine by waving the Communist banner.

Readers who can get beyond the amusing antics will still find tidbits of truth in the pages of an Inconvenient Book. The chapters cover every possible topic imaginable from child sex offenders and the harmful effect of pornography to the United Nations and global oil dependency to Islam and racism. Beck and Balfe are adamantly opposed to political correctness and their argument against it is sound, exhibiting not only the cry for freedom of speech but also of the negative consequences of self-censorship. Issues include those that are solely domestic such as those related to immigration, popular culture, and the imagined liberal media bias. Yet the authors also cover international issues too.