(FORTUNE Magazine) – A generation of pandering film reviewers has rendered the phrase "laugh-out-loud funny" almost meaningless through repetition. But--and I'm not afraid to repeat this--America (The Book) (Warner, $24.95), the new coffee-table book from Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show, is truly laugh-out-loud funny. How do I know? When it first arrived on my desk, I opened it to a random page and immediately laughed out loud. (As FORTUNE is a family publication, we can't reprint here what made me chortle.) Subsequent experiments on friends and co-workers have produced audible guffawing within minutes in every case. Why? It's a riot.

Of course, it's also juvenile, snide, and bawdy--basically The Daily Show without TV censors to worry about. Playing off his nightly campaign coverage of "Indecision 2004," Stewart and his team of correspondents have produced this guide to "Democracy Inaction" in the form of a faux history textbook. Divided into chapters such as "Congress: Quagmire of Freedom," the book mangles the history and traditions of our republic with an irreverent joy reminiscent of The Onion's Our Dumb Century and a pre-PC mindset that hearkens back to the equal-opportunity insult blitzkrieg of Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles. The margins are packed with helpful tidbits ("Were You Aware? Due to an early typo, America very nearly became a 'Democrazy.'"). And each chapter ends with discussion questions ("What does 'bicameral' mean? Are any of the girls in your class 'bicameral'?") and classroom activities ("Find out each representative's 'porn name' by adding the name of the largest city in their district to the name of their state flower!"). Not every routine measures up. But enough do that, I reiterate, you will chuckle resoundingly. --Brian O'Keefe