I almost hate to do this. Al Gore has been doing a wonderful job in promoting awareness of global warming. His movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is something that everyone should see, and he has been, to borrow the phrase of a close friend of mine, something of a “liberal superhero” as of late. His experience, leadership, and knowledge, have convinced a great many, myself included, that he’s the right person for the oval office in 2008; currently Al Gore is placed third among democrats, despite the fact that he’s not even running (“White” online). Should he decide to jump in the race, I doubt there would be anything stopping him from winning, again.

Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason, however, is unlikely to win anything. The writing is just not good. I don’t mean this to reflect on Gore’s intelligence, education, or character; the man is simply not a good writer. I’ll get into specifics, but first I should mention that, despite the title, the subject of Gore’s book is slightly misleading. The book isn’t so much the discussion of an assault on reason; oddly enough, reason is never even defined. Gore does go into some detail regarding the way most Americans get their information, namely, television. In the Introduction, Gore brings up the alarming statistic[1] that American’s spend, on average, more than four and a half hours watching television (Gore 6). He actually does do a pretty good job with this, bringing in some historical examples of why such a medium can be dangerous, especially when the air waves are dominated by a few powerful people or organizations. For the most part, however, his book is a critique pointed in the direction of the Bush administration, a target that has been and will surely continue to be a huge source of material for contemporary authors and future historians. Gore provides information that I had not been aware of prior to reading, most of it speaking for itself with little commentary needed. In this respect, I’m very glad to have read the book, though I can’t say Gore offered to me much in the way of ideas that I would not have received had I simply read the primary literature on the subject.

He also has a sort of pseudo-intellectual voice in his writing. He has a habit of simply quoting someone of presumed authority without offering any context or critical analysis of the view being expressed. For example, Gore writes, “As Aristotle once said of virtue, respect for the rule of law is one thing; it is indivisible. And as long as it remains indivisible, so will our country” (Gore 71). Aristotle said that? What did he mean by that exactly? Was he correct? Not only does Gore fail to analyze the idea at all, he doesn’t even cite Aristotle, and, for anyone who isn’t aware, Aristotle wrote a lot. The quote could easily have come from a variety of sources such as the Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, or several other works. The book is loaded with quotes such as this from the likes of those such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Adam Smith; all of them worthy of quoting, no doubt, but all of their ideas open to criticism as well, and certainly worthy of citation.

I’ve been accused, myself, of overdoing citations, adding formal references to writings as casual as blog posts and email correspondence. Perhaps this behavior does deserve a laugh, but when we’re talking about actual books, in print, read by many, there’s no reason to have sloppy citations. There are several quotes, such as the one mentioned, as well as statistics, that are simply not cited. Material that is referenced in the back of the book has no parenthetical citations, not even a superscript. This is annoying to anyone who actually is interested in looking up some of the sources. I expected more from Al Gore, though I suppose I owe it to him to put this into perspective. Earlier in the year I attempted to read another book on contemporary political issues,[2] Bill O’Reilly’s Culture Warrior. The reason I never got around to writing a review was because I only got halfway through the book. Despite a load of assertions, not a single citation was offered; for an author I had a very low opinion of from the start, the book was not worth finishing. Gore was a bit more professional, and, understandably, his audience was probably people in the general public, who, if his statistics are on the mark, probably don’t make much time for reading good books. Still, he could have done much better, and anyone paying attention to the Bush administration, the influence of mainstream media, and the most basic reports of the environmental science community, would have little to gain from reading this book. Nevertheless, Gore shows a clear understanding of the many problems we face in the world, and communicates them in a manner that most Americans should be able to understand. There are times, also, when the writing almost anticipates an announcement of Gore’s candidacy, as he discusses what he’s done regarding certain issues, and what he thinks needs doing in the future to get our nation back on track. I doubt he’ll actually run, but his writing certainly seems to suggest that he hasn’t ruled the possibility out. We can only hope at this point; his abilities as a political leader far surpass his abilities as a writer. For a more favorable review, that also goes into a bit more detail of the topics Gore touches on, I invite the reader to check out this article in the New York Times (Kakutani online).

Gore, Al. The Assault on Reason. New York: The Penguin P, 2007.

Kakutani, Michiko. "Al Gore Speaks of a Nation in Danger." The New York Times 22 May 2007. 8 June 2007 .

"White House 2008: Democratic Nomination." PollingReport.Com. 2007. Polling Report Inc. 8 June 2007 .