Author: Steve Stern
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199828
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022 "A frothy picaresque that ... vibrates to the “sweet celestial confusion” of Soutine’s painting: delirious and earthy, reverent and irreligious." -- The New York Times Book Review A wild, effervescent, absinthe-soaked novel that tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutine Steve Stern’s astonishing new novel The Village Idiot begins on a glorious spring day in Paris 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists of the age have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated regally in a bathtub pulled by a flock of canvasback ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has a secret advantage: his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub from underwater. Soutine, an unwashed, misfit artist (who incidentally can’t swim) has been persuaded by the Italian to don a ponderous diving suit and trudge along the floor of the river Seine. Disoriented and confused by the artificial air in his helmet Chaim stumbles through the events of his past and future life. It’s quite an extraordinary life. From his impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl to his equally destitute days in Paris during the Années Folles, the Crazy Years, from the Cinderella patronage of the American collector Albert Barnes, who raises him from poverty to international attention, to his perilous flight from the Nazi occupation of France, Chaim Soutine remains driven by his unrelenting passion to paint. To be sure, there are notable distractions, such as his unlikely friendship with Modigliani, who drags him from brothels to midnight felonies to a duel at dawn; there are the romances with remarkable women who compete with and sometimes salvage his obsession. But there is also, always on the horizon, the coming storm that threatens to sweep away Chaim and a generation of gifted Jewish refugees from a tradition that would outlaw their longing to make art. Wildly inventive, as funny as it is heart-breaking, The Village Idiot is a luminous fever-dream of a novel, steeped in the heady atmosphere of a Paris that was the cultural capital of the universe, a place where anything seemed possible.
The Village Idiot
Author: Steve Stern
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199828
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022 "A frothy picaresque that ... vibrates to the “sweet celestial confusion” of Soutine’s painting: delirious and earthy, reverent and irreligious." -- The New York Times Book Review A wild, effervescent, absinthe-soaked novel that tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutine Steve Stern’s astonishing new novel The Village Idiot begins on a glorious spring day in Paris 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists of the age have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated regally in a bathtub pulled by a flock of canvasback ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has a secret advantage: his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub from underwater. Soutine, an unwashed, misfit artist (who incidentally can’t swim) has been persuaded by the Italian to don a ponderous diving suit and trudge along the floor of the river Seine. Disoriented and confused by the artificial air in his helmet Chaim stumbles through the events of his past and future life. It’s quite an extraordinary life. From his impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl to his equally destitute days in Paris during the Années Folles, the Crazy Years, from the Cinderella patronage of the American collector Albert Barnes, who raises him from poverty to international attention, to his perilous flight from the Nazi occupation of France, Chaim Soutine remains driven by his unrelenting passion to paint. To be sure, there are notable distractions, such as his unlikely friendship with Modigliani, who drags him from brothels to midnight felonies to a duel at dawn; there are the romances with remarkable women who compete with and sometimes salvage his obsession. But there is also, always on the horizon, the coming storm that threatens to sweep away Chaim and a generation of gifted Jewish refugees from a tradition that would outlaw their longing to make art. Wildly inventive, as funny as it is heart-breaking, The Village Idiot is a luminous fever-dream of a novel, steeped in the heady atmosphere of a Paris that was the cultural capital of the universe, a place where anything seemed possible.
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199828
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022 "A frothy picaresque that ... vibrates to the “sweet celestial confusion” of Soutine’s painting: delirious and earthy, reverent and irreligious." -- The New York Times Book Review A wild, effervescent, absinthe-soaked novel that tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutine Steve Stern’s astonishing new novel The Village Idiot begins on a glorious spring day in Paris 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists of the age have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated regally in a bathtub pulled by a flock of canvasback ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has a secret advantage: his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub from underwater. Soutine, an unwashed, misfit artist (who incidentally can’t swim) has been persuaded by the Italian to don a ponderous diving suit and trudge along the floor of the river Seine. Disoriented and confused by the artificial air in his helmet Chaim stumbles through the events of his past and future life. It’s quite an extraordinary life. From his impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl to his equally destitute days in Paris during the Années Folles, the Crazy Years, from the Cinderella patronage of the American collector Albert Barnes, who raises him from poverty to international attention, to his perilous flight from the Nazi occupation of France, Chaim Soutine remains driven by his unrelenting passion to paint. To be sure, there are notable distractions, such as his unlikely friendship with Modigliani, who drags him from brothels to midnight felonies to a duel at dawn; there are the romances with remarkable women who compete with and sometimes salvage his obsession. But there is also, always on the horizon, the coming storm that threatens to sweep away Chaim and a generation of gifted Jewish refugees from a tradition that would outlaw their longing to make art. Wildly inventive, as funny as it is heart-breaking, The Village Idiot is a luminous fever-dream of a novel, steeped in the heady atmosphere of a Paris that was the cultural capital of the universe, a place where anything seemed possible.
Adventures of
Author: Zachary Taylor
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781495322181
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Whenever The Village Idiot thinks that life couldn't get any better, BAM!, The Twilight Zone kicks him right in the belly. Find out how he and his banditry of heathen brothers snake their way through life's chaos. Set up in a series of non-fiction short stories, The Village Idiot, which ironically was the name of the commercial fishing boat he fished on in Alaska. The author adopted the name Village Idiots as a nickname for him and his heathen brothers. A book of "You-Can't-Make-This-Shit-up" stories, all based around the author and lead Village Idiot, Zachary S. Taylor. Each story is more bizarre than the next, making them a quick read, perfect for the man of the family, next-to-the-toilet-bowl reading material. Zeke has lived the gypsy lifestyle for more than 20 years. His travels have taken him from one end of the planet to the other, many, many times. A former United States Marine, Alaska Commercial Fisherman, Alaska Mountain Guide and Expedition Leader, Hard-Core Biker, Dog Trainer, Ladies Man, Adventurer and Storyteller, give him real life experiences to tell a good story. If you have ever run into him having a sociable at the local watering hole, you may have already heard some of these time tested master pieces. Now, before I blow too much smoke up my own ass, enjoy the day. Peace.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781495322181
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Whenever The Village Idiot thinks that life couldn't get any better, BAM!, The Twilight Zone kicks him right in the belly. Find out how he and his banditry of heathen brothers snake their way through life's chaos. Set up in a series of non-fiction short stories, The Village Idiot, which ironically was the name of the commercial fishing boat he fished on in Alaska. The author adopted the name Village Idiots as a nickname for him and his heathen brothers. A book of "You-Can't-Make-This-Shit-up" stories, all based around the author and lead Village Idiot, Zachary S. Taylor. Each story is more bizarre than the next, making them a quick read, perfect for the man of the family, next-to-the-toilet-bowl reading material. Zeke has lived the gypsy lifestyle for more than 20 years. His travels have taken him from one end of the planet to the other, many, many times. A former United States Marine, Alaska Commercial Fisherman, Alaska Mountain Guide and Expedition Leader, Hard-Core Biker, Dog Trainer, Ladies Man, Adventurer and Storyteller, give him real life experiences to tell a good story. If you have ever run into him having a sociable at the local watering hole, you may have already heard some of these time tested master pieces. Now, before I blow too much smoke up my own ass, enjoy the day. Peace.
Village Idiot
Author: David Sheinkopf
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781946989994
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
Ever wonder what it's like to grow up in Greenwich Village and live the fast life of a teenage kid who's breaking into the brilliant inside world of modeling and television, meeting beautiful girls, hanging out with neighborhood kids willing to try anything once, and doing recreational drugs of every stripe? Here, by turns, is the revealing, deeply touching, hilarious, and heart breaking story of a twelve-year-old who does just that-who goes from print modeling to soap operas, makes serious money and spends it like it's going out of style, suffers painful losses, crashes into one catastrophe after another, runs into real emotional and physical trouble. . .and survives because, at root, he has a good heart. It's a tale of faith in oneself and triumph over tough odds that leave some of his nearest and dearest dead, strung out, or doing hard time.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781946989994
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
Ever wonder what it's like to grow up in Greenwich Village and live the fast life of a teenage kid who's breaking into the brilliant inside world of modeling and television, meeting beautiful girls, hanging out with neighborhood kids willing to try anything once, and doing recreational drugs of every stripe? Here, by turns, is the revealing, deeply touching, hilarious, and heart breaking story of a twelve-year-old who does just that-who goes from print modeling to soap operas, makes serious money and spends it like it's going out of style, suffers painful losses, crashes into one catastrophe after another, runs into real emotional and physical trouble. . .and survives because, at root, he has a good heart. It's a tale of faith in oneself and triumph over tough odds that leave some of his nearest and dearest dead, strung out, or doing hard time.
It Takes a Village Idiot
Author: Jim Mullen
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9780743218795
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Finalist for the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor a Rocky Mountain News (Denver) Best Book of the Year Millions of people dream of abandoning the city routine for a simple country life. Jim Mullen was not one of them. He loved his Manhattan existence: parties, openings, movie screenings. He could walk to hundreds of restaurants, waste entire afternoons at the Film Forum, people-watch from his window. Then, one day, calamity. His wife quits smoking and buys a weekend house in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York -- in a tiny town diametrically opposed to Manhattan in every way. Slowly, however, the man who once boasted, "Life is just a cab away," begins to warm to the place -- manure and compost and strangers who wave and all -- and to embrace the kind of life that once gave him the shakes.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9780743218795
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Finalist for the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor a Rocky Mountain News (Denver) Best Book of the Year Millions of people dream of abandoning the city routine for a simple country life. Jim Mullen was not one of them. He loved his Manhattan existence: parties, openings, movie screenings. He could walk to hundreds of restaurants, waste entire afternoons at the Film Forum, people-watch from his window. Then, one day, calamity. His wife quits smoking and buys a weekend house in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York -- in a tiny town diametrically opposed to Manhattan in every way. Slowly, however, the man who once boasted, "Life is just a cab away," begins to warm to the place -- manure and compost and strangers who wave and all -- and to embrace the kind of life that once gave him the shakes.
Family Guy: It takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One
Author: Alex Borstein
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061143324
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
In addition to sharing detailed accounts of her highest highs and lowest lows, as well as her scathing views on the state of public affairs today, Mayor Lois Griffin also shares the pages of this book with the people who put her in office. By giving them such a strong voice in this record of history, she not only reveals how Quagmire pimped out the vote, Peter sold out to the media, Meg coped with sudden celebrity through sullen poetry, Stewie mounted yet another terrorist plot against her, disgraced former mayor West recovered from defeat, and she herself succumbed to the temptations of the job, she also reveals just how valuable she holds the ideals of democracy. Part biography, part town-ography, this no-holds-barred book comes with a strong message for all: It takes a village—and sometimes even a village idiot’s wife—to set things right in America again.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061143324
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
In addition to sharing detailed accounts of her highest highs and lowest lows, as well as her scathing views on the state of public affairs today, Mayor Lois Griffin also shares the pages of this book with the people who put her in office. By giving them such a strong voice in this record of history, she not only reveals how Quagmire pimped out the vote, Peter sold out to the media, Meg coped with sudden celebrity through sullen poetry, Stewie mounted yet another terrorist plot against her, disgraced former mayor West recovered from defeat, and she herself succumbed to the temptations of the job, she also reveals just how valuable she holds the ideals of democracy. Part biography, part town-ography, this no-holds-barred book comes with a strong message for all: It takes a village—and sometimes even a village idiot’s wife—to set things right in America again.
Global Village Idiot
Author: John O'Farrell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409022633
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
'This week the first pet passports came into effect. Around the country dogs have been hopping into photo booths and trying to look as relaxed as possible, which is not easy when you know you're not allowed on the chair.' Gathered here are the best of John O'Farrell's newspaper columns for the Guardian and the Independent which saw him win the coveted Best Columnist of the Year Award at the prestigious British Liars Awards. Among many other things, he claims that the only conviction in the Tory Party will be when Jeffrey Archer gets sent to prison; that scientists have created a genetically superior monkey which will advertise lapsang souchong instead of PG Tips; and that with the election of George W. Bush, the global village has finally got its own global village idiot.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409022633
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
'This week the first pet passports came into effect. Around the country dogs have been hopping into photo booths and trying to look as relaxed as possible, which is not easy when you know you're not allowed on the chair.' Gathered here are the best of John O'Farrell's newspaper columns for the Guardian and the Independent which saw him win the coveted Best Columnist of the Year Award at the prestigious British Liars Awards. Among many other things, he claims that the only conviction in the Tory Party will be when Jeffrey Archer gets sent to prison; that scientists have created a genetically superior monkey which will advertise lapsang souchong instead of PG Tips; and that with the election of George W. Bush, the global village has finally got its own global village idiot.
The Eagle's Shadow
Author: Mark Hertsgaard
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374706328
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
What America looks like to the rest of the world Americans rarely used to think about the outside world. As the mightiest nation in history, the United States could do as it pleased. Now Americans have learned the hard way that what outsiders think matters. When terror struck last September 11, author Mark Hertsgaard was completing a trip around the world, gathering perceptions about America from people in fifteen countries. Whether sophisticated business leaders, starry-eyed teenagers, or Islamic fundamentalists, his subjects felt both admiring and uneasy about the United States, enchanted yet bewildered, appalled yet envious. This complex catalogue of impressions--good, bad, but never indifferent--is the departure point for a short, pointed essay in the tradition of Common Sense and The Fate of the Earth. How can the world's most open society be so proud of its founding ideals yet so inconsistent in applying them? So loved for its pop culture but so resented for its high-handedness? Exploring such paradoxes, Hertsgaard exposes uplifting and uncomfortable truths that force natives and outsiders alike to see America with fresh eyes. "Like it or not, America is the future," a European tells Hertsgaard. In a world growing more American by the day, The Eagle's Shadow is a major statement about and to the place everyone discusses but few understand.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374706328
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
What America looks like to the rest of the world Americans rarely used to think about the outside world. As the mightiest nation in history, the United States could do as it pleased. Now Americans have learned the hard way that what outsiders think matters. When terror struck last September 11, author Mark Hertsgaard was completing a trip around the world, gathering perceptions about America from people in fifteen countries. Whether sophisticated business leaders, starry-eyed teenagers, or Islamic fundamentalists, his subjects felt both admiring and uneasy about the United States, enchanted yet bewildered, appalled yet envious. This complex catalogue of impressions--good, bad, but never indifferent--is the departure point for a short, pointed essay in the tradition of Common Sense and The Fate of the Earth. How can the world's most open society be so proud of its founding ideals yet so inconsistent in applying them? So loved for its pop culture but so resented for its high-handedness? Exploring such paradoxes, Hertsgaard exposes uplifting and uncomfortable truths that force natives and outsiders alike to see America with fresh eyes. "Like it or not, America is the future," a European tells Hertsgaard. In a world growing more American by the day, The Eagle's Shadow is a major statement about and to the place everyone discusses but few understand.
The Idiot
Author: Elif Batuman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014311106X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction • A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction “Easily the funniest book I’ve read this year.” —GQ “Masterly funny debut novel . . . Erudite but never pretentious, The Idiot will make you crave more books by Batuman.” —Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail. Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 • Mashable One • Elle Magazine • The New York Times • Bookpage • Vogue • NPR • Buzzfeed •The Millions
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014311106X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction • A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction “Easily the funniest book I’ve read this year.” —GQ “Masterly funny debut novel . . . Erudite but never pretentious, The Idiot will make you crave more books by Batuman.” —Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail. Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 • Mashable One • Elle Magazine • The New York Times • Bookpage • Vogue • NPR • Buzzfeed •The Millions
It Takes a Village
Author: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471108643
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455
Book Description
Ten years ago one of America's most important public figures, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, chronicled her quest both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public to help make our society into the kind of village that enables children to become able, caring resilient adults. IT TAKES A VILLAGE is a textbook for caring, filled with truths that are worth a read, and a reread. In her substantial new introduction, Senator Clinton reflects on how our village has changed over the last decade, from the internet to education, and on how her own understanding of children has deepened as she has watched Chelsea grow up and take on challenges new to her generation, from a first job to living through a terrorist attack. She discusses how the work she is doing in the Senate is helping children and looks at where America has been successful, improvements in the foster care system and support for adoption, and where there is still work to be done, providing pre-school programmes and universal health care to all our children. This new edition elucidates how the choices we make about how we raise our children, and how we support families, will determine how all nations will face the challenges of this century.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471108643
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455
Book Description
Ten years ago one of America's most important public figures, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, chronicled her quest both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public to help make our society into the kind of village that enables children to become able, caring resilient adults. IT TAKES A VILLAGE is a textbook for caring, filled with truths that are worth a read, and a reread. In her substantial new introduction, Senator Clinton reflects on how our village has changed over the last decade, from the internet to education, and on how her own understanding of children has deepened as she has watched Chelsea grow up and take on challenges new to her generation, from a first job to living through a terrorist attack. She discusses how the work she is doing in the Senate is helping children and looks at where America has been successful, improvements in the foster care system and support for adoption, and where there is still work to be done, providing pre-school programmes and universal health care to all our children. This new edition elucidates how the choices we make about how we raise our children, and how we support families, will determine how all nations will face the challenges of this century.
Idiot America
Author: Charles Pierce
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767926153
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER The three Great Premises of Idiot America: · Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units · Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough · Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it With his trademark wit and insight, veteran journalist Charles Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States. Pierce asks how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate. But his thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated. Erudite and razor-sharp, Idiot America is at once an invigorating history lesson, a cutting cultural critique, and a bullish appeal to our smarter selves.
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767926153
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER The three Great Premises of Idiot America: · Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units · Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough · Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it With his trademark wit and insight, veteran journalist Charles Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States. Pierce asks how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate. But his thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated. Erudite and razor-sharp, Idiot America is at once an invigorating history lesson, a cutting cultural critique, and a bullish appeal to our smarter selves.