Speaking Frankenly

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has a new book about to be released on May 30.  It's not a book on policy, but the story of his race for the Senate in 2008 which he won -- after an eight-month recount and challenges -- by a whopping 312 votes.

While it promises to be a well-written and wonderful tale, particularly based on having read his previous books, it's the incredibly self-deprecating title and cover which makes the book so-especially worth noting.

​I just absolutely love that and keep laughing every time I see it.

(By the way, it's worth noting that when Franken ran for re-election in 2014, Minnesota voters were suitably impressed with the job he'd done during his first term, that they returned him to office with a significantly bigger margin -- just under 203,000 votes, or 53.1% of the total.  His next closest challenger only had 42.9%.)

You can pre-order the book here.  As I said, it gets released in only a week-and-a-half from today.  I'm not a fan of Audiobooks, I prefer reading though if one has long daily commutes, I can see the benefits, but if ever I was tempted to buy one, it would be this since it's "read by the author."  (Maybe after reading it, I'll try to find an inexpensive used AudioCD.)  This is the publisher's description --

​From the #1 bestselling author - the story of an award-winning comedian who decided to run for office and then discovered why award-winning comedians tend not to do that.
 
AL FRANKEN, GIANT OF THE SENATE is a book about an unlikely campaign that had an even more improbable ending: the closest outcome in history and an unprecedented eight-month recount saga, which is pretty funny in retrospect. It's a book about what happens when the nation's foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it. It's a book about our deeply polarized, frequently depressing, occasionally inspiring political culture, written from inside the belly of the beast. In this candid personal memoir, the honorable gentleman from Minnesota takes his army of loyal fans along with him from Saturday Night Live to the campaign trail, inside the halls of Congress, and behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic and/or hilarious moments of his new career in politics.