Known across Canada for his quick shots at politicians on the CBC-TV series This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Rick Mercer has gathered together 70 snappy routines for retrospective yuks.

He has a self-deprecating wit of the kind Stephen Leacock made famous. For example he calls Canada “the most dysfunctional country on the face of the planet.” He accepts the national prejudice against banks, Toronto as the centre of all things Canadian, former P.M. Brian Mulroney, and, of course, American as a nationality that Canadians would rather not have. He dislikes trade treaties, suspecting that they will lower Canadian wages, and is glad Canada is able to tweak Washington’s nose by doing business with Castro’s Cuba.

After a few of his quickies, Mercer’s humour machine becomes obvious. The essays read as contrived, as though he had a national poll of what people don’t like and then extrapolated the humorous potential and wrote a few barbs. Yet the wit remains.

Mercer’s shtick works better on air than it does in print. Nevertheless, it can work for viewers who love him or as an example of Canadian humour in the late 1990s. To his credit, Mercer has written a book that any Canadian can understand and that few outsiders will be able to comprehend at all. That is the inner value of his book, for he shows that Canadians, a people of little patriotism, vast contempt for politicians, and fear of bigger countries, are at least united when it comes to chortling over a punchline.