The Librarian

The Librarian is the 2004 Larry Beinhart political-satire novel that takes his American Hero / Wag the Dog political-cynicism register into the post-9/11 American political landscape. David Goldberg is a young academic librarian who takes a part-time job organizing the personal archive of a billionaire political donor. The job exposes him to a planned election-rigging operation aimed at securing a second-term Republican incumbency.

Beinhart's strength in The Librarian is the careful working-out of the political-conspiracy material in the satirical mode. The campaign-finance background, the religious-right organizational politics, and the specific way contemporary election-manipulation actually works are all rendered with the kind of attention only a working political satirist would bring. Fans of Christopher Buckley's Thank You for Smoking or Carl Hiaasen's Florida political comedies will recognize the careful satirical-fiction register.

The book reads quickly and the political analysis underneath is sharper than the comic-thriller surface suggests.

Four stars. A confident post-9/11 political satire. The Librarian Larry Beinhart novel is one of the strongest entries in the post-2000 American political-satire form. Recommended for readers of Hiaasen, Buckley, or Beinhart's own American Hero.