Book Review: “Diversions” by Ed Hall

If you were to judge Ed Hall solely by the cartoons in his latest book “Diversions,” you’d quickly group him into the hate-mongering-anti-Bush crowd. What perhaps does not come through in the book is that Ed is a registered Republican and was a “W” voting resident of Florida – the state that put President George W. Bush in the White House. But Bush’s first term election was a long, pre 9-11, time ago and as Ed exclaims, “Bush made a lot of promises – but everything since then has been a diversion.”

So with that theme in mind, Ed began his follow up book to “Code Red” his first book, hand picking 150 of his favorite or most powerful cartoons out of a pool of over 750 that he has done since 2003 (Ed produces eight cartoons a week, four local ‘toons that are printed in the Baker County Press and then an additional four other editorial cartoons that are syndicated through Artizans, a Canadian syndicate). The book isn’t completely about the Bush administration – he does cover other topics (that are oddly enough in the headlines today) such as Ken Lay, high gas prices, professional athletes using steroids, and several political shots at Howard Dean.

The book’s reception has gone well. Ed reports that book signings are very popular (and the cash cow of a self published book), but the book sells have gone well on national online book retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million. In fact, Amazon has ordered up the last of Ed’s inventory. The original run was 500 copies and it appears that more books may have be printed. His first book sold out it’s initial 500 copy run and an additional 250 had to be printed.

If you’re looking for a good book to give to the disgruntled Republican or gitty liberal in your life, check out “Diversion and other political observations by Ed Hall” and look for some exciting animation projects in the future.