This month,
EARTH (The Book)
By Jon Stewart and the Writers of The Daily Show
Like its hilarious predecessor, America (The Book), Earth is a satiric jaunt through our planet's history, biology and culture. The premise behind the book's existence is that it is a Frommer's guide book, of sorts, for alien visitors, the book being the only information source left after humanity has died out. Because humans have become all but extinct, the book is easy to read with lots of pretty pictures, diagrams and charts. If you read America, you'll be very familiar with the high school text book design, or if you went to high school and actually read any of your text books.
Those clever Daily Show folks nicely organized the books into easy to digest sections like- Earth, Man and The Life Cycle, while also including clever appendices with titles like, Why We're Not Here. This made me laugh the most as it included such possible reasons for our demise as Alien attack, natural disasters and genetically enhanced killer Bee Sharks. Don't get stuck in just one section of the book, though, because each chapter is loaded with funny little bits, right down to the smallest print.
Even though this book does a fabulous job of skewering everything we know down to the smallest detail, there is a twinge of sadness and nostalgia felt while reading because it does make you wonder about when and how we will ultimately destroy ourselves, and the planet. But then you flip to the page that has a picture of Larry King's penis, and you are jolted back into reality. After a thorough reading, I have no fear that any aliens, be they Vulcans, blue Avatar guys, or chest bursters, would be able to get the basics about the human race and this planet from Earth (The Book).