I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President »

Josh Lieb is the Emmy-winning co-executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and has worked on such shows as The Simpsons and Newsradio. This is his first YA novel. He lives in New York City with his wife, Beata, and their dog, Lollipop

Family Guy meets Election in this hilarious young adult debut!

Twelve-year-old Oliver Watson's got the IQ of a grilled cheese sandwich. Or so everyone in Omaha thinks. In reality, Oliver's a mad evil genius on his way to world domination, and he's used his great brain to make himself the third-richest person on earth! Then Oliver's father—and archnemesis—makes a crack about the upcoming middle school election, and Oliver takes it as a personal challenge. He'll run, and he'll win! Turns out, though, that overthrowing foreign dictators is actually way easier than getting kids to like you. . . Can this evil genius win the class presidency and keep his true identity a secret, all in time to impress his dad?

Publishers Weekly

Lieb, executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, debuts with a novel about a class election that may appeal to his show's audience as well as middle-schoolers. Oliver Watson has known since infancy that his intellect is several cuts above average. At 12, he's the third richest person in the world, secretly running a global empire while pretending to be mentally vacant (imagine The Simpsons' Ralph Wiggum as a seventh-grader). Oliver's intellectual superiority is equaled by the meanness of his spirit. He enjoys secretly torturing his teachers and describes his adoring mother as “a shapeless, witless mass of mousy hair, belly fat, and boobs.” His pathological disdain for his father, who fondly recalls his own school electoral victory, fuels Oliver's decision to toss his hat in the ring—in order to show up Dad. The ample scatological humor is joined by a few jokes that will sail over the heads of actual seventh-graders, e.g., an aside about the work of Raymond Carver. But these won't keep readers from getting wrapped up in Oliver's malevolence and bile. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)