From book jacket: This scathingly hilarious political satire ... answers the burning question: Would anyone care if East St. Louis seceded from the Union? East St. Louis, Illinois ("the inner city without an outer city"), is an impoverished town, so poor that Fred Fredericks, its idealistic mayor, starts off Election Day by collecting the city's trash in his own minivan ... The national election hinges on Illinois's electoral votes and, as a result of the mass disenfranchisement of East St. Louis, a radical right-wing junta led by a dim-witted Texas governor seizes the Oval Office. Prodded by shady black billionaire and old friend John Roberts, Fredericks devises a radical plan of protest: East St. Louis will secede from the Union ... Birth of a Nation starts with a scenario drawn from the botched election of 2000 and spins it into a brilliantly absurd work ... Along the way the authors lay into a host of hot social and cultural issues -- skewering white supremacists, black nationalists, and everyone in between-drawing real blood and real laughs in equal measure in this riotous send-up of American politics.