Book Review: The Unlikely Disciple

Since I work at Barnes and Noble, I am always kept up to date with the hip new books.
One particular book that stuck out to me that we were pushing was called The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose. It's a young man's account of his semester at the conservative Christian Liberty University after transferring from Brown University. I thought it might be cool to get an outsider's perspective of Christianity and Christian Culture.
The premise started out good, liberal Brown student wants a change of pace and decides to enroll at Rev. Jerry Fallwell's "Bible Bootcamp" which is Liberty University. If like me, you weren't sure who the late Jerry Fallwell is, he is an uber conservative and controversial pastor who is frequently quoted on condemning homosexuals, but probably most famously declaring the teletubby Tinky-Winky of being a gay role model. Anyway, the book goes through Kevin's "journey" into exploring christian culture, which he had obviously done no research on before he entered the university. Half the book ended up being, "Whoa, did you know evangelicals believe this?" Yes, you presumptous little punk I did know that, because I read the flippin bible. This was really clear to me when two-thirds through the book the author was suprised to find out that evangicals didn't encourage pornography and masturbation. No duh, big surprise there. Besides what may be my biased view, if you believe being Christian is being biased along with every other world view, the book was also poorly written by an unexperienced writer. I guess I can't fault him for only being 21, I do find it hard to see his wisdom or insight in the book. What Mr. Roose did do right was subject matter and timing. The author interviewed Jerry Fallwell for the school newspaper and it ended up being Mr. Fallwell's last interview. Mr. Roose climbed to attention of the news media and publishers and lucked out. Instead of truly reflecting on his experience and maybe doing some more research, he shelled out this below average novel before he even graduated. His conclusion seemed to be that, "These evangelical Christians are allright." Wow, I'm sure that evangical Christians were really looking for his approval. I guess you could say I had trouble relating to the author.