Thrown Under the Omnibus ─ A Reader

P. J. O'Rourke has had a prolific career as one of America's most celebrated humorists. But that career almost didn't happen. As he explains it, "I began to write for pay in the spring of 1970. To tell the truth I didn't even want to be a writer, I meant to be a race car driver, but I didn't have a race car."

Fortunately for us, he had to settle for writing. From his early pieces for the National Lampoon, through his classic reporting as Rolling Stone's International Affairs editor in the '80s and '90s, and his brilliant inimitable political journalism and analysis, P.J. has been entertaining and provoking readers with high-octane prose, a "pants-down Republican" attitude, and a rare ability to make readers laugh out loud. Chris Buckley once described his work as "S. J. Perelman on acid," and when Penguin published itsDictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, P.J. had more entries than any other living writer. For the first time,Thrown Under the Omnibus brings together his funniest, most outrageous, most controversial, and most loved pieces in the definitive P.J. reader. Selected and introduced by the humorist himself,Thrown Under the Omnibus is the essential P. J. O'Rourke anthologya must-have for any fan.

P. J. O'Rourke has written sixteen 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 bestseller list. He is a contributing editor at theWeekly Standard, H. L. Mencken fellow at the Cato Institute, a regular panelist on NPR'sWait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me, and a columnist for the Daily Beast. He lives in rural New England, as far away from the things he writes about as he can get.