What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank

Publisher: Holt

Year: 2005

Pages: 336

Thomas Frank was on The Daily Show last year before the election, and though I’d meant to pick up his book ever since, I’d forgotten until I saw it at the library last week.

What’s the Matter With Kansas? is somewhat inconsistent, but its impression on me was overwhelmingly positive. Frank begins by posing this question: why do the poor people of Middle America (the red state farmers and blue-collar workers) vote against their own economic interests? It’s a question that has fascinated me ever since I read a similar article at Alternet in the middle of last year. The answer lies in that fact that “liberal” and “conservative” are not the easy binary we see them as.

Frank frames his debate in the context of his home state, Kansas, a place that has historically wended radical (think 19th-century Populism) but is today thought of as perhaps one of the reddest of red states (short of maybe Texas or Alabama). Why the change? Without spoiling Frank’s book for you, I will simply say that the answer involves a number of factors, not the least of which is a gradual reframing of the liberal/conservative labels from their historical meanings into a fight over morals and authenticity rather than economics interests. The big-business Moderates and the pro-life Conservatives get lumped into the same Republicanism, but they are different creatures entirely. In fact, in the new “class warfare” of modern politics, in which Liberals are characterized entirely as East coast snobs who wear turtlenecks, drink lattés, and are too smart for their own good, the Moderates seem more like leftists, even though their corporate interests are entirely disparate.

So you see, it’s a complicated web, and I think that Frank does a good job of working through it. Personally, I think he reaches his dizzying climax in Chapter 6, but then there are another 100 or so pages, which was a bit of a downer. Regardless, it’s an excellently written book, a smart book, and one that I’m sorry to say I didn’t pick up sooner.

The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Year: 2005

Pages: 400

I first read about this book in my brother’s copy of Mental Floss, a semiannual rag that’s, well, random stuff for intellectuals. Kind of like McSweeney’s, only less pretentiously literate.

The setup is this: the author, who is a senior editor at Esquire, plans to read the entire 32-volume, 65’000-article, 44-million word Encyclopædia Britannica. I expected something entirely quirky, and it was, but what surprised me most was just how good the book turned out to be.

In some ways, the book is akin to George Carlin’s Brain Droppings—though decidedly less blue—in that it is structures mostly in little dollops under headers taken from the encyclopedia. Consider Jacobs’ entry for “giraffe,” reproduced here in its entirety:

giraffe
“The voice has so rarely been heard, that the animal is supposed to be voiceless, but it is capable of low call notes and moans.” Good to know next time I’m playing with kids: “A cow says moo, a cat says meow, the giraffe says [imitate nonsexual low moan here].”

However, other entries are considerably longer, and Jacobs uses these entries to weave together a tale not only rich in private jokes (a comment in the S’s, for instance, will be funny to those of us who remember some witticism from the B’s), but with a strong frame narrative to help it along: he includes his interview with Alex Trebek, his performance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, his travails with his wife in an attempt to conceive a child, and his amorphous-yet-heartwarming relationship with his father (and, to a lesser extent, his brother-in-law).

Along the way, we’re treated to a variety of viewpoints on intelligence (hence, the practicality of Jacobs’ quest), strange Mensa members, and enough trivia to send one reeling. One of my surprise favorites thus far this year. A truly enjoyable read.