This is certainly not a book for fans of Sarah Palin, beauty queen of Wasilla and ex-politician gone rogue (ha!) - at least, not the fans who blindly follow her politics and believe she is God's gift to the modern world. It certainly won't change any of those kinds of minds. But for the anti-Palin readers - as well as anyone curious of Palin's legacy - Going Rouge may be the collection of essays and articles they've been looking for. Examining her as a public figure and a person, the book throughly goes over many of the issues that come up when discussing Palinmania: Palin's lack of experience; the Bristol issue; Palin and feminism; the view of Russia from Alaska; etc. Thoroughly comprehensive, totally relevant to the current political atmosphere of Tea Parties and revolutionary spirit, this is - and I don't say this lightly - a very important book if you really want to understand how the introduction of Sarah Palin onto the world stage in 2008 changed everything. ( )

An American Nightmare indeed. ( )

This collection about all facets of Sarah Palin, simply reinforces my belief that she is one scary kook. The sooner she is prevented from EVER influencing public policy again, the safer America will be. ( )

This collection about all facets of Sarah Palin, simply reinforces my belief that she is one scary kook. The sooner she is prevented from EVER influencing public policy again, the safer America will be. ( )

I first heard about Going Rouge here and was immediately sold. Unfortunately, it is not available on Amazon, and one needs an American address and a credit card to order it. Being lucky enough to have friends in possession of both, I have now read the book from cover to cover.

Or rather, read it twice, because there is precious little in Going Rouge that isn't already available for free online and there's a good chance that any reader who followed the 2008 elections will have already read most of it. That said, the volume's contributors are a who's who of the liberal journalism/blogging elite and the majority of Going Rouge's content is well-written and holds up well to the test of time, although what were once shocking revelations when the individual pieces were published are now old news. Perhaps this is why the volume's editors have organized the articles by theme instead of chronology--a decision I consider to be one of the book's weaknesses, as no effort has been made to clarify when individual pieces were written. This results in jarring jumps backward and forward in time, especially when "Author A's piece, published on Blog Q last month" appears dozens of chapters after the article in which it was referenced.

Nevertheless, the political wonk in me likes having all of these articles in one easy-to-grab volume, and even were that not the case, Hart Seely's "anthology" of Palin's "poetry" pretty much justifies the cover price all on its own. Although I don't recommend purchasing Going Rouge to anyone without a strong interest in 21st century American politics, those with an interest will definitely want to take a look.