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P. J. O'Rourke
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Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut: Twenty-Five Years of P.J. O'Rourke Hardcover – January 1, 1995

by P. J. O'Rourke (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 75 ratings
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An anthology of twenty-five years of writing, collected for the first time, by the nation's best-selling satirist--author of Parliament of Whores--shows his transition from hippie to neo-conservative. 150,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo. Tour.
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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Atlantic Monthly Press
  3. Publication date
    January 1, 1995
  4. Dimensions
    6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0871136090
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0871136091
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Since most of O'Rourke's (All the Trouble in the World) books are collections, this retrospective is not so much a greatest-hits album as a variably entertaining grab bag of B-sides and other miscellany. There is giddy juvenilia he wrote for the 1970s underground press, including a hilarious hoax piece about Richard Nixon's trip to China. There are several arch tales about the 1960s that O'Rourke published in the National Lampoon, including an amusing attack on communism. His bumptiously ignorant persona serves him well as he explores high-end automobiles and such sports as fishing and golf for specialized magazines. O'Rourke's brief section on "Current and Recurrent Events" reminds us of his best political work; an even briefer selection of miscellany has some funnier stuff, including his uproarious dissection of a book tour. 150,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

O'Rourke has three times achieved bestsellerdom with his satirical observations from the conservative perspective; here he collects 25 years of his writing, starting when he was, yes, a leftist-revolutionary wannabe. Then writing for the "underground" press, O'Rourke did the drugs-sex-and-rock-and-roll scene and survived to make fun of it today. Also included in the collection are pieces written for Rolling Stone and National Lampoon and a selection for Automobile and Car & Driver featuring some of the funniest (mostly) nonpolitical of his writing. Public library patrons, and even ex-hippies who appreciate political satire, will very much enjoy this.
-?Pamela R. Daubenspeck, Warren-Trumbull Cty. P.L., Warren, Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atlantic Monthly Press; First Edition (January 1, 1995)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0871136090
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0871136091
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 75 ratings

About the author

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P. J. O'Rourke

P. J. O'Rourke

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P. J. O’Rourke was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, and attended Miami University and Johns Hopkins. He began writing funny things in 1960s “underground” newspapers, became editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, then spent 20 years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly as the world’s only trouble-spot humorist, going to wars, riots, rebellions, and other “Holidays in Hell” in more than 40 countries. He’s written 16 books on subjects as diverse as politics and cars and etiquette and economics. His book about Washington, Parliament of Whores, and his book about international conflict and crisis, Give War a Chance, both reached #1 on the New York Times best-seller list. He is a contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, H. L. Mencken fellow at the Cato Institute, a member of the editorial board of World Affairs and a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait… Wait… Don’t Tell Me. He lives with his family in rural New England, as far away from the things he writes about as he can get.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
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Top reviews from the United States

The Redneck Jaco
5.0 out of 5 stars Should be made mandatory reading
Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2012
Verified Purchase
FORGET Jesse Ventura and stop making HIM money by buying his "oh guess what I learned when I was governor" silliness. P.J. O'Rourke was once a vapid liberal himself; and you can read how and why his opinions sort of "grew up" in this book. Try to imagine reading Hunter Thompson (whom the author knew) without the miasma of the "illegal substances" that eventually caused him to take his own life. O'Rourke is every bit as amusing (and vastly less pontificating!) as was the good doctor, plus you don't have to read HST's endlessly redundant drug-riden ranting about (this is just two) Christians or Conservatives. I will never...well, "knowingly," plagerize another author, no matter how mny words I might could get away with rearranging or mispelling, but I think I've quoted O'Rourke in just about everything I myself have written since about 1995. This book is hilarious, but especially read the story "So Drunk." No, no "dead grandmothers crawled up O'Rourke's leg with knives in their teeth," nor did any predatory bats swoop down upon him and his "Samonan Attorney." O'Rourke doesn't write, merely to deliberately provoke like HST did - but he too "has been there, done that, bought the t shirt, and moved on." This is Mandatory Reading, folks...
6 people found this helpful
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Gulliver
4.0 out of 5 stars Age & Guile........
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2016
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O'Rourke always makes me laugh. I enjoy his work.
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Gary A. Grelli
5.0 out of 5 stars Do you like to see sacred cows gored?
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2014
Verified Purchase
P.J. has long been a favorite of mine. He is snarky, sarcastic and very funny. Put aside your personal opinions while reading him.
Otherwise, you WILL be offended. He's like a very smart, 12 year old boy and makes fun of everything political, cultural and pompous.

He wrote for National Lampoon in the 70s. If you know National Lampoon you have a taste for this.

This particular volume focuses on his earlier writings. The period from 1969 to 1995.
I live in Baltimore and PJ wrote for the underground paper called "Harry" while he attended Johns Hopkins University. I remember it from my own countercultural youth. Those essays were of particular interest to me.

If you can laugh at yourself, you're in for a treat with PJ.
2 people found this helpful
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Chris Serger
4.0 out of 5 stars Can't go wrong with PJ
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2011
This is an eclectic collection of PJ's writings. Some of it is a down-right a waste of paper - like his "concrete poetry" inclusions. However, many of the essays are classic PJ - travelling the world, commenting on the ordinariness of people and events everywhere with his famous wit. If there's a connection between each article, I missed it. But you can certainly see his growth and evolution as a writer.

Having gone to Miami University, PJs alma mater, I was very interested in his early writing about his days in Oxford, OH. If the stories he tells are even half true then college has changed dramatically since his day. And for the better. But his writing of this period is compelling and often touching. He has some great lines, such as, "It's hard to forgive someone when you're beginning to agree with her."

You can see the shift in his political attitudes, but he never really explains them. Maybe he doesn't have to. Several of these essays are outstanding, such as his speech at the dedication of the new Cato Institute building. And his article about Hillarycare is very timely given the recent healthcare debate (note: this review written in January 2010).

If you're a PJ completest, and I am, you'll enjoy large parts of this book. But if you're new to PJ, start with  Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government  or  Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics (O'Rourke, P. J.) .
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steeze
5.0 out of 5 stars Always great.
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2014
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As usual this is just another spectacular collection of his prose. fantastic for a fan or for a first timer.
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Jeffrey Ellis
5.0 out of 5 stars Politics, stories, and concrete poetry -- best of everything
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2001
PJ O'Rourke has always been one of my favorite cultural and political commentators. An unrepentant Libertarian Republican who used to be an unrepentant Marxist radical, O'Rourke is a conservative who writes with all the wit and verve that, supposedly, only liberals are capable of. P.J. O'Rourke is the Al Franken of the American Right, if Al Franken were actually funny. Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut is made up of O'Rourke's previously uncollected writings over the past three decades. As such, the book begins with a few choice pieces from his angry days as a Marxist journalist in the early '70s (where, it must be said, O'Rourke still writes with a wit that proves that funny is funny not matter what the ideology) moves on to cover his brief period as an adherent to Concrete Poetry (an art form that he admits still having no idea what to make of) and finally closes with a few of his recent essays as Rolling Stone's Foreign Affairs Editor. Best of all, O'Rourke includes a few short stories that he wrote and published while editor of National Lampoon. The stories, all dealing with his past as a '60s radical, are a perfect mixture of radical nostalgia and modern day clear headedness and, along with an unexpected pathos for his lost characters wandering through the political wilderness of protest, they also rank amongst the most hilarious of O'Rourke's writings, perfectly displaying his trademark style of detached irony and self-depreciating wit (one can always sense O'Rourke saying, "Can you believe they actually pay me to write this stuff?"). Perhaps most nicely, the pieces in this collection are arranged by chronological order so that the reader literally goes through O'Rourke's political and literary evolution with him over the course of the book. As such, we're provided with a nice view of the political odyssey of both O'Rourke and America over the past 30-odd years. If one thing remains the same it is that O'Rourke, whether conservative or liberal, consistently refuses to accept anything at face value. He remains, always, the eternal skeptic. And we, as readers, are all the better off for it.
21 people found this helpful
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G. M. Callahan
1.0 out of 5 stars Amazon sucks
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2013
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Amazon won't let me finished I'm my book. They're lazy clowns who can't write their own add copy. That's all folks.
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