Book Review: The Simpsons Family History

2014 has been a hell of a year for The Simpsons, and the rest of the way looks to continue that trend as we look towards 2015. As a result, merchandisers, book publishers, TV networks, and others have all jumped on the celebration of what is arguably the greatest animated series of all time. Abrams Publishing is the latest example of this, and released a brand-new Simpsons Family History book that THEY hope you will purchase for $35.

What’s inside is essentially a timeline of all of the important moments in what eventually become The Simpsons Family. This includes upbringings of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie and more or less highlights from past episodes on how they came to be. Essentially, if you were able to find every Simpsons episode that had any sort of a ‘Flash back’ trope, this release is basically a scrap book of all of those episodes and featured as a coffee table read. Is it cool? Yea, but I was really looking for some extras and maybe some newness to the release. As a matter of fact, the majority of the screen stills used in any of the chapters are from older episodes! Seriously, you would think that The Simpsons haven’t produced a new episode in like at LEAST the last seven or eight years.

At the end of the day, you are getting a book that is less on any kind of wordage and heavy on pictures that feature pull page illustrations of your favorite characters from The Simpsons all in full color. So, if you are a DIE-HARD, a DIE-HARD Simpsons fan, I can definitely recommend this book as a great coffee table or book shelf type option. However, if you are someone that is looking for something new from The Simpsons brand or exciting, I suggest you look elsewhere.