Audiobooks by P.J. O'Rourke

P. J. O'Rourke is one of his generation's most celebrated political humorists, hailed as "the funniest writer in America" by both Time and The Wall Street Journal. Twenty-three years ago, he published the classic travelogue Holidays in Hell, in which he trotted the globe as a "trouble tourist," a chaos rubberneck, sight-seeing at wars, rebellions, riots, political crises, and other monuments of human folly. After the Iraq War - "too old to keep being scared stiff and too stiff to keep sleeping on the ground" - he retired from what foreign correspondents call "being a s**thole specialist." But he couldn't give up traveling to ridiculous places, often with his wife and three young children in tow. Usually he was left wishing he were under artillery fire again. O'Rourke's journeys take him to locales both near (and nearly bizarre) and far (and far from normal). Having made a joke that Ski magazine takes seriously, he winds up on a family ski vacation - to Ohio. The highest point of elevation is the six-foot ski instructor his wife thinks is cute. Convinced by an old friend and one too many drinks that "a horse trek is just backpacking on someone else's back," he finds himself (barely) in the saddle, crossing the mountains to a part of Kyrgyzstan so remote that the Kyrgyzs have never seen it. He visits Kabul for the food and conversation (excellent lamb chops and a droll after dinner story about the mullah and the cow). He even takes his kids to his erstwhile home away from home, the bar at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong. Holidays in Heck shows P. J. O'Rourke in top form - a little older, a little wiser, going to the bathroom a little more often, but just as darkly funny as he was in Holidays in Hell. Here is a hilarious and often moving portrait of life in the fast lane, as he's always lived it - only this time with the backseat driver that marriage entails and three small hostages to fortune strapped into the booster seats.

P. J. O'Rourke, P.J. O'Rourke (Author), Dan John Miller (Narrator)

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Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell follows P. J. O'Rourke on a global fun-finding mission to the most desperate places on the planet, from the bombed-out streets of Beirut to the stultifying blandness of Heritage USA. P.J.'s unforgettable adventures abroad include storming student protesters' barricades in South Korea, interviewing Communist insurrectionists in the Philippines, and going undercover in Arab garb at Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock Mosque. Packed with P.J.'s classic riffs on everything from Polish nightlife under communism to Third World driving tips, Holidays in Hell is one of the best-loved books by one of today's most celebrated humorists - a full-tilt, no-holds-barred romp through politics, culture, and ideology. "This is funny, outrageous, perceptive stuff, written with brio." -The Washington Post Book World "O'Rourke. . . seems to have teethed on brass knuckles and suckled on bile. He is also one of the funniest writers in America, or wherever else he may go to satisfy his desperate need to extract humor from folly and chaos." -Time "To say that P. J. O'Rourke is funny is like saying that the Rocky Mountains are scenic - accurate but insufficient. At best he's downright exhilarating." - Chicago Tribune

P. J. O'Rourke, P.J. O'Rourke (Author), Dan John Miller (Narrator)

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Don't Vote - It Just Encourages the Bastards

Red State. Blue State. Republicans. Democrats. Bailout. Stimulus. Health Care Reform. Blah blah blah. Has there ever been a moment where politics have sucked any more? Don't Vote - It Just Encourages the Bastards is a brilliant, disturbing, hilarious, and ultimately sobering look at why politics and politicians are a necessary evil - but only just barely necessary. P. J. presents his Sex, Death, and Boredom Theory of Politics, which breaks the social contract down to power, freedom, and responsibility by using a party game, Kill, F@#k, Marry, more typically found in late-night giggle sessions at all-girls boarding schools. With this tripartite lens of politics, O'Rourke looks at the financial crisis ("The best investment I've made lately? I left a $20 bill in the pocket of my tweed jacket last spring, and I just found it"), the bailout, health care reform ("Something doesn't add up. Politicians are telling me that I can smoke, drink, gain two hundred pounds, then win an iron man triathlon at age ninety-five"), the stimulus package, climate change ("There's not a god-damn thing you can do about it . . . There are 1.3 billion people in China and they all want a Buick"), trade imbalance, the end of the American automobile industry, U.S. foreign policy and the Family of Nations ("Uncle Russia's out on parole, drunk, unemployed, and likely to kill some folks next door again soon"), campaign finance reform, gun control, No Child Left Behind ("What if they deserve to be left behind?"), and pretty much everything else under the sun. His findings: Put the country's big, fat political ass on a diet. Lose that drooping deficit. Slim those spreading entitlement programs. Firm up that flabby pair of butt cheeks, which are the Senate and the House. Listen to P. J. O'Rourke on the pathetic nature of politics and laugh through your tears or - what the hell - just laugh.

P.J. O'Rourke (Author), Christopher Lane (Narrator)

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Driving Like Crazy

A New York Times bestselling author and America's preeminent political satirist, P. J. O'Rourke also has another side to him-a gear-loose gearhead, automotive devotee, and terrifying driver. Son and grandson of car dealers in Ohio, P.J.'s family has been in the motor vehicle business since before there were motors in vehicles. And P.J. has been writing about cars-for Car and Driver, Automobile, Esquire, Forbes, and other publications-for what seems like almost as long. In this newly collected anthology of spiels-on-wheels, O'Rourke celebrates cars and berates car haters, and chronicles America's relationship with automobiles from love for a powerful chariot of freedom to tolerance of an oversized household appliance with an extra-long extension cord. Driving Like Crazy brings together thirty-some years of journalistic cornering on two wheels, including the classic "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." And he's written an appendix to that piece of sage advice for those who, like himself, are thirty years older now: "How to Do Ditto While the Drugs Are Mostly Lipitor."

P.J. O'Rourke (Author), Christopher Lane (Narrator)

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On the Wealth of Nations

As one of the first titles in Atlantic Monthly Press' "Books That Changed the World" series, America's most provocative satirist, P. J. O'Rourke, reads Adam Smith's revolutionary The Wealth of Nations so you don't have to. Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long: the original edition totaled over nine hundred pages in two volumes--including the blockbuster sixty-seven-page "digression concerning the variations in the value of silver during the course of the last four centuries," which, "to those uninterested in the historiography of currency supply, is like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu." Although daunting, Smith's tome is still essential to understanding such current hot-topics as outsourcing, trade imbalances, and Angelina Jolie. In this hilarious, approachable, and insightful examination of Smith and his groundbreaking work, P. J. puts his trademark wit to good use, and shows us why Smith is still relevant, why what seems obvious now was once revolutionary, and why the pursuit of self-interest is so important.

P. J. O'Rourke, P. J. O'rourke, P.J. O'Rourke (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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The CEO of the Sofa

New York Times bestselling author P.J. O'Rourke has toured the fighting in Bosnia, visited the West Bank disguised as P.J. of Arabia, lobbed one-liners on the battlefields of the Gulf War, and traded quips with Communist rebels in the jungles of the Philippines. Now in The CEO of the Sofa, he embarks on a mission to the most frightening place of all - his own home. Ensconced on the domestic boardroom's throne (although not supposed to put his feet on the cushions), he faces a three-year-old who wants a cell phone, a freelance career devoted to writing articles like "Chewing-Mouth Dogs Bring Hope to People with Eating Disorders," and neighbors who smell like Democrats ("That is, using smell as a transitive verb. When I light a cigar they wave their hands in front of their faces and pretend to cough."). Undaunted - with the help of martinis - by middle age, P.J. holds forth on everything from getting toddlers to sleep ("Advice to parents whose kids love the story of the dinosaurs: Don't give away the surprise ending") to why Hillary Clinton's election victory was a good thing ("We Republicans were almost out of people to hate in the Senate. Teddy Kennedy is just too old and fat to pick on"). And P.J. leaps (well, groans and pushes himself up) from the couch to pursue assignments such as a high-speed drive across the ugliest part of India at the hottest time of the year, a blind (drunk) wine tasting with Christopher Buckley, and a sojourn at the U.N. Millennial Summit, where he runs the risk of perishing from boredom and puts readers in peril of laughing themselves to death.

P.J. O'Rourke (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

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Peace Kills

Having unraveled the mysteries of Washington in his classic best-seller Parliament of Whores and the mysteries of economics in Eat the Rich, one of our shrewdest and most mordant foreign correspondents now turns his attention to what is these days the ultimate mystery - America's foreign policy. Although he has written about foreigners and foreign affairs for years, P.J. O'Rourke has, like most Americans, never really thought about foreign policy. Just as a dog owner doesn't have a "dog policy," says P.J., "we feed foreigners, take care of them, give them treats, and when absolutely necessary, whack them with a rolled up newspaper." But in Peace Kills, P.J. finally sets out to make sense of America's "Great Game" (no, not the slot machines in Vegas). He visits countries on the brink of conflict, in the grips of it, and still reeling from it, starting with Kosovo, where he discovers that "whenever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening." From there, it's on to Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq, where P.J. witnesses both the start and finish of hostilities. P.J. also examines the effect of war and peace on the home front - from the absurd hassles of airport security to the hideous specter of anthrax (luckily the only threats in his mail are from credit card companies). Peace Kills is P.J. O'Rourke at his most incisive and relevant - an eye-opening look at a world much changed since he declared in his number-one national best-seller Give War a Chance that the most troubling aspect of war is sometimes peace itself.

P.J. O'Rourke (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

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