When
Thursday, February 13th, 2014
Reception and Book Signing: 6:00 p.m.
Program: 7:00 p.m.
Where
Independent Institute Conference Center
100 Swan Way, Oakland, CA 94621-1428
Map and Directions
P.J. O'Rourke, a Member of the Board of Advisors for the Independent Institute, is America’s leading political humorist and the best-selling author of over a dozen books. After graduating from Miami University and attending the graduate program at Johns Hopkins, O’Rourke began his career of skewering both the left and the right on the ends of his razor-sharp one-liners. Among the many publications for which O’Rourke has written are The National Lampoon for which he was editor-in-chief, Automobile, American Spectator, Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s.
Using his trademark wit and razor sharp delivery, best-selling humorist P.J. O’Rourke will train his eye on the “Baby Boom” generation, in all its selfobsessed glory, and offer an entertaining and heartfelt perspective on what makes his generation unlike any other in history. “We’re often silly, and we’re spoiled by any measure of history,” says O’Rourke. “At the same time, we have made the world a better place—just not necessarily in the ways we set out to.” His new book, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way...And It Wasn’t My Fault...And I’ll Never Do It Again, is at once a social history, a group memoir of collectively impaired memory, a hilarious attempt to understand his generation’s messy inanity, and a dissection of the mess the Baby Boom has made.
As the youngest Boomers turn fifty, O’Rourke says it’s time for “the generation that changed everything” to weigh what it wrought and tally what it added to and subtracted from existence. Drawing on his own experiences and a cast of memorable characters, he will lead us on a candid but equally sentimental, laugh-out-loud journey through the circumstances and events that shaped a generation and the modern world.
“Even while discussing annual income and per capita GDP, O’Rourke maintains the dry wit that makes every chapter a delight... As a cultural analyst, O’Rourke’s ability and willingness to simultaneously lampoon and celebrate himself and his generation are unequaled.”
—Publishers Weekly
“O’Rourke’s Baby Boom may just be his best book ever. Teems with heart and humor—much of it laugh out loud, or as the post-boomers would say, LOL—as well as with his trademark brilliant social commentary. A terrific American memoir, in tone a beguiling mix of Jean Shepherd and ‘Animal House’.”
—Christopher Buckley, winner, Thurber Prize for American Humor; author of fifteen books including Thank You For Smoking
