Book Review – Glen Beck’s The Overton Window

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I expected Glen Beck’s novel, The Overton Window, to be as full of hateful propaganda as Mein Kampf.

I was correct in that assumption. What I hadn’t been prepared for, however, was that it would also contain an engaging and ingenious plot that would keep even the most dedicated of liberals grudgingly fascinated. However, it’s Dan Brown-like appeal does nothing but make it that much more frightening in that one actually enjoys absorbing Beck’s mad fantasies. The frightening part is that Beck himself actually believes these fantasies to be true. He all but says so in his foreword, describing his novel as a “completely fictional book with [a] plot rooted in fact.” 

The premise behind The Overton Window is not a new one. On the contrary, it was conceived of years ago (and far more creatively) by Ayn Rand. The hero of the piece is the son of the owner and CEO of aa huge PR firm that has effectively run our country from the shadows for decades, engineering everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to both the Iraqi wars. This PR firm, Doyle & Merchant, cares not for party lines or platforms. Its goal is to build a Brave New World type of government in which the American people are led like sheep and certain “inalienable” rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are all but unheard of.  Unsurprisingly, its recent successes in this area include the government bailout of Wall Street and, of course, health care reform. Standing against this tyranny is a small but feisty group of gun-happy patriots known as the “Founder’s Keepers.” One of the leaders of the Founder’s Keepers is a pretty young girl known as Molly Ross, who happens to catch our hero Noah Gardner’s eye in the mailroom at work one day. He opts to go to a meeting of the Founder’s Keepers, and is eventually transformed by his acquaintance with the lovely Miss Ross, who then drugs him and uses him in an attempt to acquire some of his father’s incriminating documents.

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Posted by Sulome Anderson on August 2, 2010. Filed under Book Reviews,ENTERTAIMENT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry