President Me: The America That’s In My Head – Adam Carolla

For months now, the Adam Carolla podcast has been plugging two books, Adam’s latest, President Me, and Bald Bryan’s cancer memoir Shrinkage.  I hadn’t really planned on getting either, just as I had skipped Carolla’s previous 2 offerings.  Obviously, I had already relented on Bald Bryan’s book, and a chance for a meet and greet with Adam made me pull the trigger on this one as well.

Anyone who listens to the podcast regularly won’t be surprised by anything is this book, which is basically a collection of rants on what is wrong with the country today and how to fix it.  In Carolla’s world, everything is black and white (pun somewhat intended, as race comes up a bit), and his cures for societies ills are just as nuanced.  In some scenarios, it makes for a humorous take on the absurdities of the world we now live in.  When he tries to get down to real issues, like education and the growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots, it is less so.  But, again, it is nothing I haven’t heard before.

And that, I guess, is my biggest beef with the book.  It mostly feels like a transcript of podcasts that I have already listened to, which is somewhat disappointing, and one of the reasons I had avoided Adam’s books to this point.  Having said that, given the amount of free entertainment I’ve gotten from the podcast over the years, the $30 I spent on this is a small price to pay.  So now I just have to wait for Allison Rosen to put out a book to hit the trifecta.