Charney begins a journey through the Twittersphere to prove that Glenn Beck is nothing more than an entertainer--a liberal in a conservative suit. Setting up his Twitter account "BeckIsALib," he begins tweeting to see who will become his followers and what their responses will be. As he becomes more obsessed with his Klout, he finds himself engaging tweeters on both sides of the political spectrum, discussing his point of view and learning things along the way.
As I mentioned in my First Chapter Review of this book, I feel it's important to start off with the Introduction, because one might be a bit lost otherwise. Though the first chapter speaks mostly about Twitter--how to use it, popular terms, etc., the book moves swiftly from that to Charney's experiment. If I had the chance to speak directly with the author, I might ask why he chose to save some of the funniest quips for his footnotes. People--myself included--are notoriously bad about reading them. I soon realized, however, I might miss good stuff if I didn't continue reading them throughout the book.
Honestly, until I got to the last few chapters I wasn't sure what my review would look like. For a while, I felt the author simply dropped Glenn Beck's name in there as a selling point, because references to Beck became fewer as the book continued. I don't want to reveal why that happened, but it is explained and Charney does a nice job of tying everything together.
From page 206 on, I found myself circling page numbers and underlining portions of text. The author makes several excellent points about society and politics. Chasing Glenn Beck by Michael Charney is definitely worth reading if you want to delve into the role social media plays in politics for the average person and how one man's experiment can evolve into something even he never expected.
Title: Chasing Glenn Beck: A Personal Experiment in Reclaiming Our Hijacked Political Conversation
Author: Michael Charney
Paperback: 260 pages
Publisher: Riddle Brook Publishing LLC (December 16, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0984792708
ISBN-13: 978-0984792702
SRP: $14.95
Also available in a Kindle edition.
I received a free paperback copy of this book directly from the author in conjunction with his Pump Up Your Book virtual book tour. I received no monetary compensation of any kind to provide this review.
This is the tenth book I've read for the following challenge:
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1 comment:
Thanks for the wonderful review, Cheryl! Wow - you're going to read 150 books? Sounds like a great challenge but I can't even get through the one or two a month I have now, lol. Kudos to you, keep on trucking!
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