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An essential take on the stranger-than-fiction 2016 presidential election from a quintessential voice on American politics and culture.
O'Rourke has a nice, world-weary way with the US's present political follies... He hasn't lost his gift for the brutally effective one-liner.
scabrously witty, inventive and rich in historical detail... O'Rourke is never less than pleasurable company. There were chapters in this book I read twice just for the fun of it... I am already looking forward to the companion volume What The Hell Happens Next?
extremely funny
O'Rourke has a real eye for the vagaries of American politics and, on occasion, piercing insight.
O'Rourke has been for decades the wittiest guide to America, and the usual ingredients are packed into this volume. How the Hell Did This Happen? is scabrously witty, inventive and rich in historical detail.
Whether you agree with him or not, P.J. writes a helluva piece.
Who better than one of America's most-respected humourists to make sense of an election in which real life frequently appeared to approach satire?
P.J. O'Rourke is like S.J. Perelman on acid.
P.J. O'Rourke was really the first to inject non-liberal hilarity into political discourse . . . But more important, he was able to yank conservatives out of the hands of the humorless and shrill, and make such writing accessible . . . He changed my life.
[O'Rourke] occupies a rare place among the laughing class: He has somehow avoided the orifice obsession that captivates many of its members; he identifies as Republican; and he is no mere thumb-sucker, having visited more than 40 countries to report on wars, regime changes, economic revolutions and the experience of drinking cocktails garnished with the poison sacs of cobras.
Outspoken conservatives have long been a minority in comedy, particularly in the mainstream media, which provided an opportunity for P.J. O'Rourke, who for decades cornered the market for prominent right-wing humorists . . . If his wry essays have a mission statement . . . it's this: Starchy Republicanism is really, really fun.
As a cultural analyst, O'Rourke's ability and willingness to simultaneously lampoon and celebrate himself and his generation are unequaled.
P. J. O'Rourke wrote more than twenty books on subjects as diverse as politics and cars and etiquette and economics. Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance both reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. He was a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, a regular panellist on NPR's Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me, and editor-in-chief of the web magazine American Consequences. Long a resident of rural New England, as far away from the things he wrote about as he could get, he died in 2022 at the age of 74.