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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 300
EAN: 9780871136114
ISBN: 0871136112
Label: Atlantic Monthly Press
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 340
Publication Date: August 12, 1995
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Studio: Atlantic Monthly Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In a national best-seller, the right-wing humorist skewers the liberal media's fashionable concerns, traversing the globe to reveal the absurdities behind such problems as overpopulation, pollution, and ethnic hatred. Reprint.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
P.J. O'Rourke is like that wise and reliable army or college buddy, who when you're drunk enough to embrace stupid, nudges you in the ribs to remind you that yes, the woman you're grinning at does indeed have a nice smile, but her lipstick is smeared, her eye make-up shouldn't be greener than a 65 Dodge Dart, and besides being a little overweight the Adam's apple she has suggest that all's not what it appears.
ALL THE TROUBLES IN THE WORLD should be mandatory reading in high school and college, if only to balance out the bull droppings of teachers and professors who speak eloquently and passionately on the ills of the world but haven't bothered to actually to spend much time traveling in it. Boots on the ground always offer up better views than brochures.
O'Rourke is smart, funny, and spot on with his observations. He would make a fine assistant Ambassador to the UN, if say, they allowed scotch and cigars at the table and he was able to nudge the Ambassador to remind him that that sweet little nation over there with the come hither eyes actually has an Adam's apple.
Or, to be properly PC ...then to nudge the female Amabassador to remind her that the hunk of a habitat she's thinking about going to bed with won't actually call her in the morning and might have stolen her credit card.
Put down that vampire romance novel and give a read to this book because it might open your eyes to the fact that things don't really suck.
Rating:  -
PJ delivers as always, this is very funny at times (for a re-born republican that is... lol)
Rating: -
Some disclosure - I'm a huge PJ O'Rourke Fan. Even so, this book, along with "Eat the Rich" is a classic.
Everytime you hear how messed up the US is, or how bad things are, or any other Chicken Little squawking pick this up. I've read it at least three times and it still cracks me up. It's a great perspective and makes you feel lucky if you live in the US. His books give me some of my best one-liners.
Rating: -
Even those who disagree with P.J. O'Rourke's conclusions will usually tell you that his manner of expressing those conclusions is highly entertaining. O'Rourke's dry wit and bizarely appropriate analogies are absolutely hysterical. I listened to this book at the gym and had several of those "weird guy laughing at nothing" moments that can make you an outcast in a hurry.
But besides being funny, O'Rourke applies sound fundamentals of economics and history to a very logical dissection of the world around us. Being written in 1993, some of this book's examples are dated, but the logic used to analyze them is just as instructive today as it was then, and most of today's issues possess close parrallels in O'Rourke's 90s examples.
The book reads lightly, but O'Rourke traveled to Somalia, Haiti, the Amazon, Vietnam and other hot spots in writing this book - he did serious work and has a serious philosophy underlying his humor.
Give this one a read and see the world the way the politicians would rather we didn't.
Rating: -
P.J. O'Rourke is the thinking man's John Stewart. Where Stewart is merely snarky and cutesy, O'Rourke has some actual working knowledge of the world, of history, and of human nature. In this book, he adroitly and hilariously skewers all of the "Henny Penny" sky-is-falling enviro-nazis who's holier-than-thou worship of nature is about to snuff out the human race. If you wonder why ideas like the Kyoto Protocol are so insane and ill-advised, read this book. If you've ever wondered about terrorist groups such as E.L.F., read this book. If you've ever had an unexplainable urge to snicker and hoot with derision whenever some earnest WASPy wannabe rasta mon tie-dyed tree-hugger begins to blather on about alar, read this book. In the midst of all of his cynicism and sarcasm, P.J. actually sheds a lot of light on some of the motivations, emotionalism, and deceptions of the far leftist enviro-whacko movement...how it is based in inaccuracy and ideological lunacy. He presents solid, well-researched facts in a way that is not dry, but delightfully pointed. This book is the archenemy of Al Gore's sci-fi thriller, EARTH IN THE BALANCE, and it blows the ex-Veep's book all to hell, and will leave the reader in tears of laughter. Check it out!
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