08 : a graphic diary of the campaign trail / by Michael Crowley and Dan Goldman.
This a a good example of a niche market where a graphic treatment makes good sense. Not as exhaustive as a standard text treatment, but that's fine. The images give a feel for what most of us remember. Crowley and Goldman use two reporters as a Greek chorus, commenting on the events.
All quotes used are accurate and the events resonate (especially for Democrats) since they are part of our near past, a past that is important to remember as we rocket into the future.
Crowley is a senior editor at The New Republic and appears on MSNBC, while Goldman is an experienced graphic novelist, known for Shooting War, which explores the life of a modern war correspondent. Dan Rather makes a cameo appearance.
Now, for the uninitiated, graphic novels can seem an odd choice for a book about a political campaign. After all, McCain isn't quite the Dark Knight. Cheney might be the Dark Joker, but isn't all this too serious to be covered in a comic book.
Fortunately, there is a growing tradition of graphic treatment for serious topics. This started with Maus, certainly one of the top one hundred modern books and one that is taught in many high schools. It's subject? The Holocaust, as told to the artist by his father.
Surprisingly, travel books also work well graphically, such as Pyongyang : a journey in North Korea and Shenzhen : a travelogue from China by Guy Delisle.
In general, I prefer fiction, such as the Lucifer series, Neil Gaiman's Sandmanseries and the Queen and Country spy series (think LeCarre).
No matter what you thought of Dark Knight or Watchmen, check out the graphic novels. Dark Knight is very dark, much more than the movie. Watchmen is just plain better, though they tried to copy the text as closely as possible, they just left out too much. Frank Miller can be a prototypical neocon (he also wrote 300)and Alan Moore is a genuine eccentric genius.
This a a good treatment of the campaign. It lacks the depth of a 500 page book, but I wouldn't read a 500 page book on the campaign and if I did it would lack much of the immediacy and drama of the drawings. If you haven't read a graphic novel, I would start with Maus, which is an exception work. 08 is a good book and worth the time.