by Jon Stewart
First published 2010
Jon Stewart faces the imminent end of the world and decides humanity needs one last comprehensive record. He gathers The Daily Show writing team for an urgent two-week project to document everything about the human species before it vanishes forever. They compile what people looked like, what they built, and how they organized their societies, governments, religions, sciences, and cultures. Stewart approaches this monumental task with his signature irreverence and sharp wit, deliberately abandoning any pretense of objectivity or journalistic standards. The team creates a 256-page guide filled with colorful photographs, graphs, and charts that captures the essence of human civilization. As Stewart and his writers race against time, they tackle the biggest questions that have puzzled humanity since its beginning. The book becomes their attempt to answer these mysteries for whoever might discover it after humans are gone, mixing intelligence with comedy to create a posthumous explanation of what it meant to be human.
Genres: non-fiction, comedy, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: found-family, race-against-time
246 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing