• Political satire sells, especially when it has a youthful spin like Geist’s, such as Jon Stewart’s America or Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (and So Can You!).
• Willie Geist is on MSNBC for three and a half hours each weekday, from 5:30-9AM. He also hosts a video blog on MSNBC.com that attracts more than one million viewers every month.

In just three short years, Willie Geist has gone from behind-the-scenes producer at MSNBC to rising on-air star, as host of Way Too Early with Willie Geist and co-host of Morning Joe. He’s fast, he’s funny—something of an early morning Jon Stewart.

Now, in his first book, he focuses on America’s ongoing parade of giant pop culture personalities, beings inflated by the Internet and 24-hour cable news and tethered only loosely to the ground. Think helium-filled characters like Sarah Palin, Bernie Madoff, Rod Blagojevich, Miley Cyrus, Jon and Kate, Miss California Carrie Prejean, Captain Sully, and the aptly named “Balloon Boy.” They float into our lives, consume our attention as we gawk from the street, and then slowly drift away as another one bobs into view.

In a series of hilarious yet biting satirical essays, Geist captures the absurdity of today’s pseudo-celebrity-obsessed culture. Among other things, he reveals, for the first time anywhere, Sarah Palin’s 2012 Inauguration speech, broadcast to a national audience live from the site of WWE's "Monday Night Raw" as a tribute to "Real America." Geist also takes us inside the room for The Bernie Madoff Celebrity Roast in Hell. Roastmaster Pol Pot provides the laughs. And you'll pull up a seat for Sunday coverage of the 7th annual Kim Jong-Il Celebrity Golf Tournament, where Dear Leader teams with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and funnyman Ray Romano for a good cause and some bad golf.

Lately, American life seems like a parade of larger-than-life, over-inflated giant balloon characters. Geist has written their made-up stories.