Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut: Twenty-Five Years of P.J. O'Rourke [Hardcover]

P. J. O'Rourke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1995

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.

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 341 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; 1st edition (August 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871136090
• ISBN-13: 978-0871136091
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,881,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the same side-splitting humor as Holidays in Hell, February 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut (Paperback)

Much of P.J. O'Rourke's self-deprecating humor is funny, down-to-earth and insightful. But beware - when he writes in this manner he is joking on the level. So when you read the introduction to Age and Guile and see how low of an opinion he has of the material published in this book, TAKE HIS WORD FOR IT - THIS ISN'T VERY GOOD MATERIAL. If you're considering buying this book because you enjoyed P.J.'s other works, re-consider. This material earns at most an occasional, light chuckle and more frequently induces sleep. Some of P.J.'s other works, particularly Holidays in Hell, elicited much more appropriate reactions from this reader for a book with the word "humor" printed on the back cover. Several of P.J.'s travel essays from that book can be expected to cause the kind of painful laughter that makes it difficult to breathe, see or even stand, and in some readers will even cause loss of bladder control. So if you haven't read Holidays in Hell, then I recommend you buy that book instead of this one. Unless you're having trouble sleeping.

5.0 out of 5 stars An old peacenik gets common sense, March 8, 2010

By 

Rex Book Seller (Ohio, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut: 25 Years of P. J. O'Rourke (Hardcover)

The former editor of the Rolling Stone uses humor to make political commentary. He goes through much of his writing from high school and college, then on into his career as a writer and editor. He looks back at his naivete' regarding the political scene and arrives at a middle age where he now has common sense (like so many of us)!
This is a book that the Progressive Elites running our government into the ground need to read!

5.0 out of 5 stars O'Rourke from Leftist Grub to Conservative Blowfly, December 17, 2009

By 

JamesNYC "JamesNYC" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut: Twenty-Five Years of P.J. O'Rourke (Hardcover)

This is an excellent anthology of O'Rourke's writings from his commie journalist days in Baltimore in the early 1970s, through his years at NATIONAL LAMPOON, up to the mid-90s when he was writing articles about politics, current events and foreign affairs for ROLLING STONE and the conservative AMERICAN SPECTATOR. Included are articles about cars the he wrote for CAR & DRIVER, articles about fishing and hunting originally published in MEN'S JOURNAL, and a speech he gave at a CATO Institute function.

The essays vary greatly not just with regards to topics, but also with respect to the degree of humour, and some border on the serious. But all are interesting, as any P.J. O'Rourke fan would expect.

As O'Rourke states in the Introduction: "It is, I guess, interesting to watch the leftist grub weaving itself into the pupa of satire and then emerging a resplendent conservative blowfly."