Thrown under the omnibus A reader

P. J. O'Rourke

Book - 2015

"Ranging over five decades, Thrown Under the Omnibus is the definitive anthology of the journalist the Wall Street Journal has called 'the funniest writer in America'"--Flyleaf.

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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
P. J. O'Rourke (author)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
Anthology of humorous essays selected and introduced by the author himself.
Originally published in various collections, 1983-2014.
Physical Description
xv, 844 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780802123664
  • Introduction
  • Selections From ...
  • Modern Manners (1983, revised edition 1989)
  • What Are Manners?
  • The Fundamentals of Contemporary Courtesy
  • Important People
  • The Bachelor Home Companion (1987, revised edition 1993)
  • We Are All Bachelors Now
  • How I Became a Bachelor Housewife
  • Bachelor Entertaining
  • Republican Party Reptile (1987)
  • Myths Made Modern
  • Ship of Fools
  • How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink
  • A Cool and Logical Analysis of the Bicycle Menace
  • The King of Sandusky, Ohio
  • Holidays in Hell (1988)
  • A Ramble through Lebanon
  • Among the Euro-Weenies
  • At Sea with the America's Cup
  • Seoul Brothers
  • The Holyland-God's Monkey House
  • Third World Driving Hints and Tips
  • Parliament of Whores (1991)
  • Preface
  • The Mystery of Government
  • The Winners Go to Washington, D.C.
  • Agricultural Policy
  • At Home in the Parliament of Whores
  • Give War a Chance (1992)
  • The Death of Communism
  • Return of the Death of Communism
  • Dispatches from the Gulf War
  • All the Trouble in the World (1994)
  • Multiculturalism
  • Famine
  • Environment
  • Plague
  • Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (1995)
  • A Few Thoughts on Humor and Humorists
  • The Welsh National Combined Mud Wrestling and Spelling Bee Championship
  • Fly-Fishing
  • Bird Hunting
  • Deep-Sea Fishing
  • Golf
  • Eat the Rich (1998)
  • Love, Death, and Money
  • Bad Capitalism
  • Bad Socialism
  • From Beatnik to Business Major
  • How to Make Nothing from Everything
  • How to Make Everything from Nothing
  • Eat the Rich
  • The CEO of the Sofa (2001)
  • "Its a Person!"
  • Kid Pro Quo
  • What You Learn from Having Kids
  • Summer
  • 35th Anniversary of Elaine's Restaurant
  • Venice vs. Vegas
  • Blind (Drunk) Wine Tasting
  • The Memoir
  • Excuses for Republicans
  • Unpublished Introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
  • Peace Kills (2004)
  • Why Americans Hate Foreign Policy
  • Kosovo
  • Israel
  • 9/11 Diary
  • Kuwait and Iraq
  • On The Wealth of Nations (2007)
  • An Inquiry into An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
  • The Wealth of Nations, Book 1
  • The Wealth of Nations, Book 2
  • Driving Like Crazy (2009)
  • Sgt. Dynaflo's Last Patrol
  • A Better Land than This
  • Reincarnation
  • Big Love
  • Dont Vote-It Just Encourages the Bastards (2010)
  • Politics Makes Us Free-And We're Worth It
  • A Digression on Happiness
  • The Purgatory of Freedom and the Hell of Politics
  • Taxes
  • More Taxes
  • Why I'm Right
  • Holidays in Heck (2011)
  • Introduction
  • Republicans Evolving
  • A Horse of a Different Color
  • A Journey to ... Let's Not Go There
  • The Seventy-Two-Hour Afghan Expert
  • The Baby Boom (2014)
  • Prologue
  • In the Doldrums of Fun
  • The Prelude
  • Ripeness Is All
  • Big Damn Messy Bundle of Joy
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Too much of even a good thing can be tiring, as this overstuffed retrospective from the talented humorist O'Rourke (The Baby Boom) demonstrates. Surely, at some point during the compiling of this massive collection, someone must have suggested leaving out some weaker selections, such as a lighthearted essay comically referencing the Nazi use of cattle cars, or a dated ode to the bachelor life that's replete with seduction advice aimed at men who are-wait for it-too inept to wash their own clothes or shop for their own groceries. O'Rourke's breezy style can be fun, in short doses. His small essay "A Digression on Happiness" is bright and engaging. But his travel pieces tend to be simultaneously overlong and short on information, and his attempts to tackle big events-the fall of Soviet Communism; the 9/11 terrorist attacks-offer little that is new. An account of his cancer scare, "A Journey to... Let's Not Go There," is quietly affecting, but the other personal essays tend toward flippancy. At one point, O'Rourke mocks a more serious-minded author's work as weighing "more than a cinder block"-oddly, the book in question came in at 70 fewer pages than O'Rourke's. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.