By Jacob Potash

“In the spring of 2004, I graduated with a degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania.” On this improbably dull note begins “The Midwest: God’s Gift To Planet Earth,” the new coffee-table book by Mike Draper and the staff of Raygun, Draper’s hip clothing store headquartered in Des Moines. But the book is a little like Draper’s stereotypical Midwesterner: it may not come on strong, but if you get past the modest, polite exterior you’ll find there’s a cool and often hilarious and surprisingly knowledgeable person there.

Draper tells us that his time at Penn made him see the Midwest in a new light. No one could remember which state he was from – was it Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, or Kansas? – but regardless, they knew he was different. He uses the mysteriousness of the Midwest

Maybe “coffee-table book” isn’t a fair label. The book comes equipped with terrific illustrations, clever captions, and small tables and charts. But plain old text – paragraph after paragraph of it! – comprises most of the book. That mass is divided up into around 30 chapters, 6 pages apiece. 6 small pages: the perfect length to hold your attention for a few interstitial minutes.

The chapters read like extended Jon Stewart monologues – wide-ranging, smart, accessible, and pretty dang funny. The book’s biggest surprise has to be how truly informative it is. Don’t read it just for the one-liners: enough of those “interstitial minutes” and you’ll have learned yourself a thing or two about the Midwest. Draper was an Ivy League history major, and it shows. He has a talent for weaving historical anecdotes into his stand-up routine. The 235 pages travel easily across time and place and subculture. While he is not master of all trades – correction: William Dean Howells was not a humorist – he is able to say intelligent, funny things about an astonishing array of subjects.

There are a sprinkling of minor grammatical and spelling mistakes, which are forgivable considering the book’s length and the fact that its author is a t-shirt salesman. It should also be noted that there is some vulgar language. If you’ve watched Jon Stewart, you’re used to it.

“The Midwest” is a little uneven. Towards the end, Draper forgets to be funny – he’s clearly too busy trying to summarize dense books about the Midwestern economy. But he does a good job of that. And this book is not meant to be read from cover to cover. It’s meant to be picked up at random and enjoyed for a few minutes. So take a few minutes and pick it up — at your local bookstore today.