Customer Reviews

The Boomer Bible

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read the Boomer Bible 5 years ago. At first I thought it was just a humor book. It's sold in the humor section of book stores. The book is indeed hilarious. But it's also a profound and frightening journey into our modern world. Virtually every subject from the beggining of time is touched upon and we learn from Laird's distinctive style of writing just how we got into this modern mess we're in. After reading the censored chapter (where some harrier has crossed out all the lines they don't want you to read-a very clever device), I felt profoundly depressed. I believed I was a harrier and that there was no hope. Laird's satire really hit home. But the punk testament pulled me right out of the myre and gave me new hope. Laird is a genius, the book is hilarious and brilliant. At first you hear of Harry and you are excited and amused by his teachings. You want to believe in the things he believes in. He speaks for you, but slowly you learn that holding on to those beliefs and not questioning them are where we've gone terribly wrong. When I started the book, I was indeed a Harrier, after reading it, I'm a punk with an axe to grind. I've bought at least 15 copies of this book as gifts for friends. I think it's one of the most importants book ever written. It should be read and studied by everyone.

In this gorgeous book, R F Laird accomplishes many miracles, foremost among them an old man is lying on a gurney in a hospital doped up waiting to die and thinking back through his life and questioning his choices, his fate, his disappointments, and at one point his much addled mind grabs hold of first Jesus then Lincoln and makes a glorious amalgam of them in the torque of his heart's strings and the end of his rope and it is as beautiful as any passage written in English. This book was poorly marketed and its literary heights and cerebral depths and perceptual vistas are masked by the cover which is only in the most superficial and banal sense compatible with its content. Buy this book--it is the most important thing you can do if you care about rescuing a book that should never be forgotten from the jaws of potential (likely) obscurity.

Laird has something to say about the human condition - and he says it with a striking amount of style and humor. Copying the format of an actual bible (books divided into chapters and verses, complete with cross-references) the Boomer Bible gives an irreverent and scorching account of every nation's history. The prose favors brevity and hilarity. Very quickly the reader gains the impression that we humans have botched it. From the very beginning we've been nothing but bad news, killing each other with pointed sticks and spending all our time inventing new ways of murdering one another. It's been the same all through the centuries; we're bad, bad, and worse. There's no reason to expect the future will be different, there's no point in changing, so why try? Or so says Harry, the Christ-like effigy that pops up in the "New Testament" portion. The Boomer Bible was poignant, touching, and so funny there were times I had to stop reading just to appreciate it. Praise is cheap, but this truly was an amazing book.

Why only 4 stars? The books meant to parallel the prophets of the Old Testament were just plain dry, and I suspect the author might have intended them to be skipped. I slogged my way through much of them hoping for something, but surrounded by the humor and significance of the rest of the book, they were a barren desert. I ended up skipping very many pages, though I hated doing so for fear of missing something.

I unconditionally recommend this book.

My family picked this up years ago, from a random shelf of a random bookstore. It looked neat. Then we fought over it for years. We never saw another copy, and no one had heard of it. If it weren't for the Wall Street Journal quote on the back, I would have been quite willing to believe the Author's note, which claims the book was never published, and is moved by a secret society. I took it to college, and my brothers screamed. Until they found they could order it from the internet. I never go anywhere without it, and sleep with it near the bed. It makes great protection from the demons of cynicism, hopelessness, and uncaring. This is just about the most effective piece of literature I have ever read. And I read a lot. I guarantee it has something for you.

This is a beautiful book. I don't think anyone who's at all regligious will be able to see the humour in it, but I thought it was a riot. There's a little bit of scathing satire for almost everything that's ever happened in the world. And it's well done, and consistent.

The book reads just like a bible; you can pick it up and start going from any arbitrary point. Or, you can read a whole book at a time.

While it's an impressive work of satire, what kills me is the fact that there's a built-in cross-reference. Some pages have more than 50 cross references to other parts of the book! That must have taken a lot of time... and to show for that effort, I'm surprised the book isn't called "The Boomer Study Bible".

This is exactly what satire should be: a mocking, scathing self-criticism.

I stumbled upon this tome quite by accident. I saw it sitting on my moms nightstand and was intrigued by the hologram on the cover. By the middle of that afternoon I had realized that in my hands was probably the funniest, most intriguing, most disturbing, and overall, the greatest book ever written. Laird has managed to sum up thousands of years of history into the first third of the book. He then makes you agree and soon vehemently detest the ways of Harry. In the Punk Testament, he gives you hope and the way out of the Harrier mess the world is today.

I think that the prior reviewers missed the deeper point that this book was trying to make, beyond satire. On the surface it is a satire of christianity but it is actually a very popular christian book. All the self-references aren't just there for looks, but have meaning if you follow them. Like they reveal that the satirical part of the book is intended to create a picture of the modern secular intellectual mind and later to show why it is inferior to hope and faith (because they can't coexist for some reason).
It is not really a parody of christianity but is making fun of christianity for being a parody of what it is supposed to be. it is designed to get christian readers upset and show how science and human nature have negated religion, but later on it shows that humans lost hope when they lost religion. The boomers in this book aren't just the baby boomers, they are the generation of the Bomb. The invention of which allegedly proved to everyone that we will all destroy the planet and ourselves one day, and killed our hope. And science had already taught that we are insignificant, and accidental, and so we became apathetic non-thinking people, "Harriers." Harry was following the scientific idea of a deterministic universe to its logical conclusion, which is, exploit others, embrace materialism to create the illusion of satisfaction, and who cares because there is no punishment or responsibility and we're going to nuke ourselves anyway.
I think that non-religious people can get a lot out of the book too. I don't understand why non-theism is regarded as hopeless or soulless. The essential lesson of christianity that this book wants to recreate is the idea that people should be responsible for their actions, and the golden rule. It's making fun of christianity because it is not supposed to be about killing people who don't believe in your god, or believing god doesn't want you to have any fun, and hating people who do, or getting comfort from the thought that your enemies are gonna fry-all the things it has been about historically. It's supposed to be about brotherly love, which is why Philadelphia is the most important city in the book. It's a metaphor for the mental state of tolerance.
These are just my opinions, but I think it is superficial to see it just as a satire. I give it 5 stars because it was really funny and thought provoking on several levels. Strangely, this book's website is run by people who think evolution is exceedingly silly, and charity doesn't exist without gods, and Stanley Kubrik helped NASA stage the moon landing.

As a history major, I truly believe that the "Book of Yanks" is the funniest and one of the most revealing versions of American History that I have ever come across in my readings. Not only does it reveal our shortcomings as a nation in a satirical way, it shows us how we came by our defects and our misadventures.

I also have to mention the Book of Dave as one of the greates treatments of American Pop Culture that I have ever seen. I would rate the Book of Dave right up there with the films of John Waters and David Lynch inasmuch as what they do to try and explain American Pop Culture.

Anyone who has a healthy sense of humor, believes that everyone is basically too full of themselves, and knows peope who take themselves too seriously, need to read this book. However, if YOU take yourself too seriously, or think that there can only be one bible, take a sedative and skip this book.

There is no way to describe Laird's book without sounding like you have lost your mind, but here goes: It is a critique of the baby boomer generation written in the style of the Bible, with an Old Testament comprising a scathing history of world cultures and a New Testament recounting the life of a drug kingpin living in Philadelphia, complete with psalms, liturgy, a description of holiday sacraments, cross references, and just about every racial, ethnic, and gender slur in existence. If you can get past that (and are still reading this) The Boomer Bible is also the most jaw-droppingly vitriolic, funny and surprisingly poignant book you are likely to find. Our vote for the book most-deserving of the Hunter S. Thompson epigram "too weird to live." Definitely not for the easily-offended.

The Boomer Bible begins with bad history: the kind of history that Boomers learned, but didn't pay attention to. It goes further into the invention of the Boomer culture: do what you want to, blame everyone else for what goes wrong. Finally, it ends with an invitation to surpass this most pathetic generation, knowing that while most of what they do is a mistake and misguided, they'll only blame someone else for it.

Read for enlightenment.