The 50% American: Immigration and National Identity in an Age of Terror Book

I agree with other reviewers: the gimmicky, pun-laden vocabulary really detracted from the book... I kept trying to remember what the author meant by this or that cutesy abbreviation. I could have possibly gotten past that, but the author's fairly incessant use of the formula "Do these faux Christians do x, y, or z? Of course not, because that was something advocated by Jesus!" really worked to undermine his credibility because it didn't attempt a real explanation for people's actions, just dismissed them with a rhetorically weak wave of the hand. (To be fair, he does attempt to explain some of the bad Christians' motivations in the book.) I also thought the organization of the book was somewhat lacking, but maybe it was just the fact that it was sometimes difficult to find content amidst all the not-very-clever wordplay.

I was hoping for a cooler, more scholarly work that dissected somewhat more of the New Testament than it did (having read very little of those writings myself) and dispassionately compared the teachings of Jesus to the actions of these modern nutbars. Also, I was hoping for a more thorough examination of how well or poorly older and more mainstream sects promote the teachings of Jesus. What I got was a sarcastic screed against fundamentalist Christians. I can do that myself, I don't need a book for that.