The Skimmer
By Amanda Ripley
The Obama Nation
By Jerome R. Corsi Threshold Editions; 364 pages
There is a need for a book that sees into the soul of Barack Obama, that measures the strength of his convictions and explains why he seems to be so good at telling people what they long to hear. The Obama Nation is not that book. It reads like the worst kind of blog: slapdash, lazy, narcissistic. Corsi, who weirdly refers to himself as "we" throughout, is clearly gunning to repeat the success of the 2004 hit job Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, which he co-authored. Early sales of Obama Nation have been strong, but readers looking for new information (of the accurate and revealing kind) will be disappointed. The book begins with a summary of a YouTube video and draws heavily on insinuations culled from blogs, TV, newspapers and Obama's own books. Corsi apparently wrote in a mad rush, in the most literal sense: I counted eight factual errors in the first 50 pages. Obama Nation may be most useful for readers convinced Obama is secretly a radical leftist Muslim smoker; they may find the book comforting, like reading a Wikipedia entry summarizing everything they have read before.
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