And Nothing But the Truthiness: The Rise (and Further Rise) of Stephen Colbert

by Lisa Rogak

In this biography, Lisa Rogak presents a funny and personal portrait of Stephen Colbert, the comedian who became the star of The Colbert Report . She reveals the tragedy that forever altered his family and charts his early yeaers, first as a serious acting student and later as a budding improv comic, before co-creating the cult TV show Strangers with Candy.  And she offers a look inside The Daily Show , and the exclusive bond that Colbert and Jon Stewart formed that led to Colbert's own rise to celebrity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Humor, Comedy, Biography Memoir, Politics

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2011

About the author

My new book Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS will be published on March 4, 2025.

Lisa Rogak is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 40 books, which have been published in more than two dozen languages. Her books Barack Obama: In His Own Words, and Angry Optimist: The Life & Times of Jon Stewart, hit the New York Times bestseller lists. Haunted Heart: The Life & Times of Stephen King was nominated for both the Edgar and Anthony Awards.

Her books have been reviewed and otherwise mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and hundreds of other publications. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show as the featured guest in a show about small towns to promote her book, Moving to the Country Once and For All.

She lives in New Hampshire and is currently at work on a memoir.

Reviews

[Kristina Coop-a-Loop · Rating 2 out of 5]

And Nothing But the Truthiness: The Rise (And Further Rise) of Stephen Colbert is book only for fans of Stephen Colbert. It's not that the author says lots of wonderful things about him, it's just that I can't imagine anyone not a fan of him and his specific brand of humor wanting to read a whole book about him. That said, this is not a great book. I often felt as if I were reading a paper researched and written by a high school student with a C+ grade average. It's only because of my interest in the topic that I continued to read it.

Rogak's book is comprised mostly of quotes culled from other sources. None of the material in this book comes from direct interviews. So her research and writing went like this: 1. Google (or if she got really technical, she used Lexis-Nexis) Stephen Colbert. 2. Read every article about him that you can find. Watch every guest appearance or interview of him you can find. 3. Pull together a massive collection of quotes by Stephen Colbert and about Stephen Colbert. 4. Write a few sentences to link together all of the quotes. 5. You're done, yah! Now go make some money by selling this book to idiot fans such as myself.

Books written like this, basically culling information from various sources, repackaging it and selling it in book form, suck. If I had known it was that kind of book, I would not have bought it. I may still have read it, but I would have saved my cash for a better book. When I describe And Nothing But the Truthiness as a high-school research paper, that's what it most clearly resembles. Just a collection of facts. There is no critical review of Colbert's approach to humor or any kind of intelligent discussion by the author on the subject at all. For a book about a satirist and comedian, the book's writing style is amazingly boring and lacking in any humor whatsoever. Of course, I don't think Rogak is a skilled enough writer to portray humor. Again, she comes off as a 17 year when she writes that the staff of The Colbert Report "love love love" working for Stephen. Three loves, huh? I'm surprised she didn't insist that the "loves" be replaced with three hearts. Or smiley faces. She also wrote: "His schedule was hellacious" (77). "Hellacious"? Dude, that must have sucked for Stephen. When did he have time to chill out? Dude! At the back of the book Rogak has a "Notes" section that lists all the quotes with their sources so at the very least you can at least check the validity of the quotes.

In addition to the teen-agery writing style, Rogak fluffs up the word count of this book by giving in depth details about meaningless crap that doesn't add anything to the narrative of the book. She spends the first fifty pages or so discussing the lives of his grandparents and his parents. I don't object to this in theory, but Rogak's mediocre writing skills don't flesh out the story of these people or make them interesting to me. Again, she's merely listing facts. With Colbert's parents there are more biographical details, but sometimes the stories again seem to serve no other purpose than to take up words. It's too bad Rogak lacked the skills necessary to research and write a good biography because his parents seemed like extraordinary people. In depth interviews with surviving family members, friends of the family and associates would have created an interesting portrait of Colbert's parents. Something else that Rogak (and her editor?) did to fill up space: huge quotes, in something like 72 point font, are positioned on just about every other page. I don't know what the technical term for it (you see these quotes most often in magazine articles and usually the quote highlighted is controversial or unusual--anything to draw in the reader's interest) but I call it annoying. And the quote highlighted is usually placed right next to the quote as it is in the text, so I see it twice. I soon trained my eyes to skip these ridiculous things. I've never seen this type of thing in a book before and now I know why--it's a crappy book and I usually don't buy crappy non-fiction books.

In all, don't bother. Even if you are fan. Just do your own Google or Lexis-Nexis search of Stephen Colbert. Then you can read the articles (and watch the interviews) in their entirety and not just what Rogak decided to pull for this book. If Stephen Colbert knows about this book, he's probably scowling and putting it on notice. One good thing: the artwork for the cover is cool.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rogak (Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King) separates Stephen Colbert, the writer, actor, and family man from the right-wing pundit he portrays on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. Through extensive research, she assembles a chronological account of Colbert’s life and career through mid-2010. While some of it reads like filler (Stephen, youngest of 11, isn’t born until page 27), the result is a conversational, multiperspective account of his life. Special attention is paid to landmarks like the tragic plane crash that claimed the life of his father and two brothers, his success at Second City, and his ongoing Comedy Central reign—as well as his brief presidential bid, being named assistant sports psychologist for the 2010 U.S. Olympic speed skating team, and having a $5 million treadmill on the International Space Station named for him. VERDICT Though chiefly assembled from previously published interviews, this is the first major biography of Colbert and one fans will appreciate. With the 2012 election ramping up, there will be interest in this complete and compelling look at the wildly popular anti–news commentator. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/11.]—Terry Bosky, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., West Palm Beach, FL

[Library Journal, Septemmber 1, 2011: Arts and Humanities Reviews]

[Ed Wagemann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lisa Rogak's biography of Stephen Colbert would have been a huge disappointment, except that I wasn't really expecting much from it to begin with. All I was hoping for was maybe a few laughs--based on the cover whihc led me to believe that it is going to be a humorous read. Instead what I got was a typical formulaic celebrity biography that couldn't have been more stale and lifeless if it tried.
That would have been okay except that the book had the most annoying narative devise possible. On every 2nd or 3rd page of the narative the editors have included these large font excerpts that repeats word for word something that is already printed in the regular text of that same page. I have seen this stunt in magazines before, as a way to get a reader's attention, but I have never seen this in a book before. And without question I hope I never see it again. For starters this is a huge insult to the reader. It's as though the editor is saying, "You are an idiot who does not have the attention span to actually read a book all the way through, so I am going to prompt you along with these sign posts to remind you to stay focued on the text, you dumbass!" For me these were such a distraction that reading And Nothing but the Truthiness was nearly impossible.
Even without that ginormous distraction this book would have been a very pale read. Rogak does her research, and it was interesting to see where Colbert came from and the life experiences that led to his huge pop culture success. And Colbert is very funny and I admire his huge balls. But this book really doesn't do him justice.

For these reasons and more I give And Nothing but the Truthiness 1.5 Wagemannheads.
NEXT!

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

5 stars to the author's son for a great title and cover, but only 2.5 stars to the content. This unauthorized biography is a compilation of previous interviews and magazine articles about Colbert that were used to cobble together a somewhat chronological telling of Colbert's life from birth to present (actually it goes back to the births of his parents). The book was full of typos; some were simple errors, but others made for confusing reading, like misstated dates and pronouns. Although it tells some fun anecdotes about Colbert's childhood and retells some of the interesting and funny things he has done throughout his career, the storytelling is somewhat uneven. Since the book is based on previous quotes and on a few interviews from people tangential to his life (some old teachers and classmates), some parts of the story receive more attention than others in order to accommodate what the author had to work with.

If you have been a consistent viewer of Colbert's show for any length of time, you will likely know most of the interesting tidbits included in this biography, but if you are a new fan, you might enjoy it a bit more.

[Sarai · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was kind of light on real information at times, but I still found it to be an interesting read. I enjoy Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report and it was nice to learn a little about the man behind the scenes. It seems a difficult task to gather real information about him, as noted by the author early on. As a Law & Order fan, I was also disappointed that it was not mentioned that he had a role on (I think it was)Criminal Intent. It was difficult watching it, having come from seeing him on the Daily Show and Colbert Report, because I always felt like his little smirk was going to peek through at any moment. :)

This is a light, fun read if you just want general information. I loved finding out about his charity work (I remember the first time my husband and I saw this in action on the show, we thought it was a fantastic idea) and got a few laughs out of the book as well.


Book Description
Publication Date: October 11, 2011

“My name is Stephen Colbert, but I actually play someone on television named Stephen Colbert, who looks like me and talks like me, but who says things with a straight face [that] he doesn’t mean.”
—Stephen Colbert

No other comedian can generate headlines today the way Stephen Colbert can. With his appearance at a Congressional hearing, his rally in Washington, D.C., his bestselling book, his creation of the now-accepted word truthiness, and of course his popular TV show, nearly everyone (except the poor Congressional fools who agree to be interviewed on his show) has heard of him.

Yet all these things are part of a character also named Stephen Colbert. Who is he really? In And Nothing But the Truthiness, biographer Lisa Rogak examines the man behind the character. She reveals the roots of his humor, growing up as the youngest of eleven siblings, and the tragedy that forever altered the family. She charts his early years earning his chops first as a serious acting student and later as a budding impov comic, especially his close connection with Amy Sedaris, which led to the cult TV show Strangers with Candy. And Rogak offers a look inside how The Daily Show works, and the exclusive bond that Colbert and Jon Stewart formed that would lead to Colbert’s own rise to celebrity.

A behind-the-scenes look into the world of one of the biggest comedians in America, And Nothing But the Truthiness is a terrific read for any resident of Colbert Nation.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an unofficial biography, so what can you expect? I adore Stephen Colbert, so I had fun reading little anecdotes about him and stuff, and I particularly enjoyed the old photographs. In fact, I think what I learned the most from this book was that Stephen used to really enjoy wearing plaid pants. But most of this is second- or third-hand stuff, and most of it I took with a grain of salt.

I had a few issues - for one, I know that the author had a few quotes that were kind of wrong. Like on page 146, the author directly quotes Stephen talking about a piece he got sued over called "Grandfatherland" that he did as a correspondant on The Daily Show. I've seen the interview where he talks about it (it's a Paley Center interview availible on YouTube), and some of the author's quotes were slightly off. It's not a huge deal, it's just slight differences, but I still think it's lazy writing and it lowers her credibility (which, I mean, it's not like this book has that much in the first place).

The writing itself is decent, although the organization could use some work. I read it in a day and enjoyed it, but don't expect anything too in-depth or reliable.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

“This biography could have easily been titled The Tale of Two Colberts; however, Colbert’s signature ‘truthiness’ seems to befit the style and enjoyment Ms. Rogak obviously had writing And Nothing But the Truthiness.”

For me, a really good biography is one about a great leader who died at least 100 years ago. To include the very much living television personality and comedian Stephen Colbert to my reading list is either putting Colbert in high praise, or lowering my standards. I claim the former.

Writing about a person who is still walking the planet does have its advantages. In this case, author Lisa Rogak takes full advantage of this opportunity to explore a complicated Stephen Colbert from his roots to his unrivaled success on the journalistic spoof of a TV show, “The Colbert Report.” With comments from Colbert’s family, friends, and coworkers, even the most ardent fan will find that there is a lot they may not know about this multifaceted, multitalented, and possibly multipersonalitied man.

read more at NYJournalofBooks.com: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/revie...

[Harry Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you see someone as talented and entertaining as Stephen Colbert, you wonder how he got that way. This book does a pretty good job of addressing that, detailing his childhood, education, and the apprenticeship he served in learning his comedic craft. But there remains some quality that just can't be captured in print, that would explain the source of the drive that keeps him going. I was disappointed at the brevity of Rogak's treatment of his appearance at the white house press correspondents dinner. His speech there was a masterful takedown of both the Bush administration and of a wishy-washy mainstream press that left many of the administration's actions undereported and their consequences underexposed. Of course, the whole question of why fake news programs like Colbert's and Stewart's are more incisive than the legitimate press needs to be explored and understood, but that's a whole 'nother book.

[Kate Woods Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

If there's an interview she missed or a magazine article she overlooked, I can't imagine where author Lisa Rogak managed it. Her biography And Nothing But the Truthiness compiles every bit and snippet of public information about Cultural 900-lb. Gorilla Stephen Colbert, and presents it all in a readable, objective style.

She did manage to snag an interview or two with some (very!) peripheral characters to add a tiny bit of behind-the-scenes info, but for the most part it's unauthorized all the way. Rogak does such a professional job, however, especially with the research on Colbert's pre-fame days, that it's hard to notice, or at least to find fault, even if one should see a bit of the workmanship around the edges. A nice, respectful treatment of Colbert's life.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author never met or spoke with Colbert and all the quotes and information are from other articles, so it's a lot like the bio of dead people. The great accomplishment is how it draws from the many sources and clearly explains Stephen Colbert the person and how he came to create Stephen Colbert the character.

It's a good bio and fun to read because of the amazing humor of Colbert. The only downside is that the author/publisher would often pad out the book by putting a quote in large fonts after it was just said. I though this stylistic choice was distracting.

[Gene Kannenberg Jr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick (one-day) read. Basically an assembly of quotations from previously published interviews and profiles, which leads to some bizarre situations, where it *looks* like jokes are being passed along as "facts." But maybe that's just truthiness in action. I did learn a lot about Colbert's early life, though, and reading about the deaths of his father and brothers was devastating. Still, overall an amusing light read.

[Brigit Zelenak · Rating 2 out of 5]

Five stars for the man, two for the book. There’s no doubt Lisa Rogak researched her subject, but the resulting product came off like a not so thrilling episode of VH1’s ‘Where Are They Now?’

Try as I might, I never got past the feeling that 90% of her 247 pages were simply regurgitations of US Weekly and People Magazine. I’d hoped for more.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're already a fan and faithful follower of Colbert's show, you won't find anything revelatory here. Most interesting to me was information about the pre-Daily Show years.

[Akshay · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a fortunate little find for me when I first got it - I had left a comment on a G+ discussion thread started by the good folks at The Colbert Report (this was back when some folks still held hope for G+ to actually become a thing!) and the next thing I knew, my comment had been selected a winner and I was shipped a complementary copy of this book!
Imagine my glee at that moment! Not only had I won a contest, but it was a BOOK and the icing on the cake was that it was the biography of one of my favourite comedians and commentators of all time: Stephen Colbert.
Finally the book arrived and I dove into it with gusto! It started of nice and simple, describing Stephens childhood and his huge family and his part in it as the youngest of eleven kids and was pretty pleasant - but maybe it was the lackluster style of the author, but as his childhood stories progressed, I actually found myself drifting off the page. Now the stories were fine, I didn't find anything boring in them per-se, plus childhood tales can often be engaging just by being simple and reminiscent of our own childhoods.
Clearly, the big flaw at this juncture and through most of the book was the writing.
In Colbert, you have one of the most interesting characters and performers in current American pop-culture (and for many years prior) with a hell of a reputation as a comedic-political-commentator with a very unique brand of humour. He has almost a cult-following amongst some fans who swear by his style and approach to the news and politics and with words like "truthiness" entering the lexicon (amongst other things) thanks to him, there is a lot that this book could and should have done.
Instead, we got a watered-down, uninteresting look at his whole life. It read like a school student writing a report on a famous figure - possibly even one that they knew but didn't care for all that much. There was nothing but factual reporting (and even that seemed overly simplistic at points) and random quotes/anecdotal stories and the result was that even things that could and should have been interesting ended up being ho-hum at best.
Nowhere did we get to really explore the evolution of the performer or the development of the charismatic character(/version of himself) that he is most famous for portraying on TV and it feels like there was little to no real input from the man himself, because if there was, there was not a whit of cleverness to any of it OR there was perhaps but it was again brought down to a student level when transcribed and mixed with the rest.
Good I suppose for hardcore fans who want to know more about Mr. Colbert, but a painful book to read due to genuinely poor writing that I can't believe was released as-is and officially approved by the subject in any way. Truth be told, if someone wrote a book about me this dull, I would either outright reject it (as politely as possible) and/or start seriously look back at my life and assess if it really was this sad and dull.
Whatever points I give the book are because of the subject matter and a few good bits here and there but I do not recommend this to anyone but the most ardent fan.

[Beverly K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, you may be wondering why I'd rate a book based upon my favorite celebrity so low. However, the rating is fairly high, considering the qualms I had with this book.

For one thing, I'm uncertain as to why Rogak feels the need to pepper pages liberally with bold, larger font quotations that fill up part of the page. This isn't a newspaper article. Is she doing it merely to eliminate space? The large quotations were redundant--we don't need her scoop on what the "most important thing" people said was.

Another thing, which is something you'd only notice if you'd read the Jon Stewart book and then the Stephen Colbert book within a short time frame (I believe I read the two within a month of each other). Rogak is lazy. Quotes in And Nothing But the Truthiness, as well as whole paragraphs, are repeated verbatim in The Angry Optimist. It decreases her credibility as a researcher, as well as my opinion of her writing. After all, teachers wouldn't accept a paper you'd written for one class for their class. Why should a professional author repeat herself and expect better results? Lazy, lazy writing.

That being said, I enjoyed seeing more into Colbert's life and history. I knew a bit of it already, being a member of the Colbert Nation. Certain aspects of the book are dated now, although that's due to when it was published. I also feel like other things could have been fleshed out more--in particular, Colbert's home life with Evie and his children, which got a few passing nods. Also, The Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear was given short shrift.

This book is a quick read and, after reading three memoirs/biographies in a row, burned me out on that type of writing for a while. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Colbert and doesn't mind Rogak's frivolous waste of space, between the bolded and enlarged quotes and, if the page ends on an odd number, a blank page in between chapters.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are younger than 18 and older than 34, you may not know that Stephen Colbert is the coiner of the word “truthiness.” In fact, you may not even be sure who Colbert is. At the very least, you may have never actually seen any of his work on stage, in the movies, or on the Comedy Central channel. I am in that latter category. To my knowledge, I’ve never actually seen Colbert’s comic acting, except, perhaps, his brief tenure in the finding Mr. Goodwrench commercials General Motors launched nearly nine years ago.

All the more reason to read this book. If anything, just to find out what you’ve been missing. Having now read Lisa Rogak’s biography, I’m still not convinced I’ve missed anything. I still don’t know who Stephen Colbert really is. Perhaps it’s because he plays a character on TV who doesn’t know who he really is.

If you’ve always been curious about how contemporary TV comedy writers and performers go about their craft, this is as good a behind-the-scenes look as you’ll likely get. Or, like me, if you’ve always been fascinated by the city of Charleston, South Carolina where Colbert spent most of his youth, this will make you want to visit there soon. Or, at least put it on your bucket list.

[Nick James · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, Stephen Colbert is awesome. We don't have many good comedians today other than Cobert, Jim Gaffigan, Jon Stewart, and Jimmy Kimmel (and Fallon). This book is a very good informational text on Stephen's life before and after The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, but that's kinda bad thing. The book starts off talking too much about his parents and family, which I really don't care about. His dad and two brothers died in a plane crash, which is tragic, yes, but this is about Stephen, not his family. It talks also too much about his high school and college years, which is okay, but not really needed. The book later goes on about his early comedic days, his appearances on the Dana Carvey Show, working with comedian Amy Sedaris on the cult comedy "Strangers with Candy", and thus, the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Colbert is hilarious and this book is very interesting, but some parts in the book aren't neede and make it kinda boring. Colbert is better off writing his own biography than Rogak.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best part of this book was probably the small tidbits of information like that Colbert played Dungeons and Dragons. Unfortunately, the book had these large scattered repeated phrases similar to how newspapers use quotes to try to draw you to the story. Why they felt the need to do this in a book you're already committed to reading, I'm not quite sure. There's a certain point in the book where they mention something about Colbert writing parts of books in 32 point font for the old grannies so they might have tried to be doing something clever with that but it really just kept taking you out of the story and it gave me a headache.

This isn't a bad book to read if you don't know much else about Colbert but I imagine it wouldn't be very good if you already knew his history.

[Gwen · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, this book had factual errors--Washington University =! Saint Louis University; Washington University =! Washington State University. Second, the book did not appear to have much in the way of original research, but rather a cobbled together history/biography of Colbert through interviews he'd done in the past. Good to have all the info in one place, but not necessarily the strongest of books or providing readers with much new information.

Learning details of Colbert's background and his parents was the most interesting part of the book--the rest of the book seemed stale/rehashed to me. Most interesting factoid: his family lived about 4 blocks away from my apartment in St. Louis.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed reading this book and essentially reliving Colbert's career which, at least starting with the Daily Show, I recall quite well. I give this only two stars because I don't think it was researched or written very well. This is a straight chronological report of unedited information. It wasn't clear to me that the author conducted any personal interviews as many of the quotes were familiar to me from interviews I've seen or read over the years. When I say unedited, I felt that the author basically included any information she collected, regardless of whether it served the narrative or would be of interest to the reader. The book was enjoyable because its subject is but the content would have benefited from better packaging.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

My son has been a fan of Stephen Colbert from before he had his own show. It took awhile but he finally convinced me to watch the Colbert Report and I fell in love with his character. It was interesting to read about his background and learn more about him, and it only made me like him more. This biography revealed a lot to me about how he grew up and underscored some assumptions that I had made about his real personality. I also really enjoyed reading about how he went from wanting to be a serious actor to doing improv and absurd political commentary. If you are a Stephen Colbert fan but don't know much about his personal life and/or growth in his career, I think you would enjoy this look at how it all came about.

[Stevie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have noticed that Ms. Rogak has written several biographies. This book lead me to believe that she might be trying to hurry and get as many written as she can before her demise. It doesn't seem as though she has any association with Stephen Colbert. Nothing comes from interactions the author has had with Colbert, but second hand from other sources. If this is so, I don't understand why you would write a biography about someone, who is still alive, with out ever personally talking with that person. All this being said, I must give this book three stars for it was a gift to me from my youngest daughter.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I love Stephen Colbert's brilliant comedy, I don't know much about his personal life or his earlier work as a comedian (other than knowing he was in Second City and his hilariousness on Strangers With Candy and The Daily Show).

I'm only a couple chapters in, but already I love this fascinating read on his parents, siblings, and his childhood.

Update: After finishing this book, I've decided that it's a must read for anyone who loves Colbert. I thoroughly enjoyed every page. Well researched and written.

[Davie · Rating 2 out of 5]

For fans of Colbert that haven't read any press or interviews about him or the show. Because the source material appears to be entirely prior press and interviews, with the exception of some quotes from very minor acquaintances (someone who once did a summer internship with the Daily Show, etc).

Still, the life is pretty interesting and the whole thing can be inhaled in just a few hours. Writing is not great, but nothing worse than what would appear in Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography, actually less fluff.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another winner from Lisa Rogak (The Dogs of War). While I am not a fan of Stephen Colbert (I actually prefer Jon Stewart), I thought his background was fascinating. The book didn't do anything to change my opinion of Colbert though. I don't know if that was the author's intent. It was a lighter read than Dogs of War, but not better.

[Elena Johansen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of biographies, but this struck me as mostly dry factualness with the odd sentence or two of sensationalism, which always seemed out of place. I was uncomfortable with way Rogak handled the tragedies of Colbert's childhood, the tone often felt insensitive. And once I reached the second half of the book, it was a blow-by-blow accounting of The Daily Show/The Colbert Report, most of which I already knew, having been a fan since the early 2000s.

[Dave Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the book is apparently written with no direct interviews from the man himself, Rogak puts together a nice biography of an interesting man drawing from old interviews, the show itself, and people who know hime. Colbert comes from a somewhat tragic past (his father and two brothers died in a plane crash when he was 12). Rogak highlights Colbert's intelligence and purpose behind his particular brand of comedy.

[Al Menaster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, fast read. This is a biography of Colbert, with a focus on the Daily Show and the Colbert report. Lots of interesting background stuff. I thought there would be lots of stuff about how the two shows are made, and there was some, but not much. Still, this was well written and held my attention. Read it in three days.

[Linda Nichols]

Pretty good book, probably all you ever want to know about Stephen Colbert, how he thinks, what makes him tick. He is a philanthropist, writer, comedian, family man, who misses his father and two brothers who were killed in a plane crash when he was 10. This tragedy has had quite an influence on his life. If you like him or like biographies, you would enjoy this book.

[Tanisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I might have found it particularly enlightening because -and I read this at least a year ago- Rogak provided nuggets of truth about the man behind the "mask" that I did not previously know. So, while it could read dull for a big fan of Colbert who already knows most about his background, I enjoyed it, as these glimpses of his childhood, family life, and work background were news to me.