Rating: 
Summary: send PJ to S. Africa
Review: I've been reading PJ for 15 years, but this not my favourite PJ book (although, a great title). I thought it only got really good at the end when describing India. This is what PJ is best at ... the stuff he used to do when roaming the world, with Rolling Stone picking up the tab. I hope PJ is at the Earth Summit going on right now in S. Africa ... lots of material going on there for PJ to take on...
Rating: 
Summary: boring
Review: If you loved O'Rourke's 'Eat the Rich', and are dying for more of his deadly, provoking, brilliant and utterly anti-liberal and anti statist-views, then don't buy this book. 'The CEO of the Sofa' is an annoyingly uninspired collection of outdated articles, columns and random thoughts. It is nowhere as funny as P.J.'s previous books. His incessant nagging about Hill&Bill is boring, boring, boring. As is the rest of the book.
Rating:
Summary: O'Rourke mocks at - just about everything
Review: In this book O'Rourke is his usual savagely funny self as he gives his views on politics, welfare, medicare, republicans, democrats, the Clintons, Monica Lewinsky and life in general. He is particulalry funny when demolishing Hillary Clinton's book 'It Takes a Village' and another bizarre book, apparently a handbook of politically correct language (this book sounded so totally weird, I wasn't sure that he didn't invent it as a joke). His piece about India is particlarly good, nobody else writes about foreign parts as well as O'Rourke. Occasionaly I found myself getting irritated, as when he gets all Michael Moore-ish about women, going on about how intelligent, efficient, competent, and generally more adult and better than men they are. I hate this. Not being at all efficient, competent and adult myself, I find myself deeply loathing Mrs O'Rourke and all thoise other smartallick women who are so different from me. He's at it again later in the book when he's on about women being wonderful with children etc. Crikey, all these female paragons he seems to know make me tired. And it startles me a bit to find that he doesn't believe that Elian's father had any right to have his son returned to him, as a father himself I would have expected him to be more sympathetic to father's rights. However, in general this is a very funny book (his comparisons between Venice, Italy, and Venice, Las Vegas, had me in stitches, likewise his experiments with wine-tasting).His most profound comment in the book is "the difference between having one child and having two, is like the difference between keeping a dog and running a zoo" That is SO true. And his wife is probably not as tiresome in real life as she seems to be in this book. Very funny.
Rating:
Summary: O'Rourke mocks at - just about everything
Review: In this book O'Rourke is his usual savagely funny self as he gives his views on politics, welfare, medicare, republicans, democrats, the Clintons, Monica Lewinsky and life in general. He is particulalry funny when demolishing Hillary Clinton's book 'It Takes a Village' and another bizarre book, apparently a handbook of politically correct language (this book sounded so totally weird, I wasn't sure that he didn't invent it as a joke). His piece about India is particlarly good, nobody else writes about foreign parts as well as O'Rourke. Occasionaly I found myself getting irritated, as when he gets all Michael Moore-ish about women, going on about how intelligent, efficient, competent, and generally more adult and better than men they are. I hate this. Not being at all efficient, competent and adult myself, I find myself deeply loathing Mrs O'Rourke and all thoise other smartallick women who are so different from me. He's at it again later in the book when he's on about women being wonderful with children etc. Crikey, all these female paragons he seems to know make me tired. And it startles me a bit to find that he doesn't believe that Elian's father had any right to have his son returned to him, as a father himself I would have expected him to be more sympathetic to father's rights. However, in general this is a very funny book (his comparisons between Venice, Italy, and Venice, Las Vegas, had me in stitches, likewise his experiments with wine-tasting).His most profound comment in the book is "the difference between having one child and having two, is like the difference between keeping a dog and running a zoo" That is SO true. And his wife is probably not as tiresome in real life as she seems to be in this book. Very funny.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit disappointing ...
Review: Maybe marriage has worn off his edge, maybe the last days of Billy Clinton really isn't joke material for him. I mean, Bill got in trouble for getting oral treatment, ... something that would proved perfectly agreeable with PJ. Anyhow, it's simply not as biting as his previously books. Too much excursion into his imaginery caricatures, and not enough bite.
Rating:
Summary: I don't get it.
Review: O'Rourke has made appearances on the political babble shows on cable, and on Leno and Politically Incorrect, and when he makes a joke (like something about how stupid Hillary's book was, or how stupid all the congressmen are, or about how you need to hide the sandwiches from Al Sharpton, or about how stupid George Bush is, or about how stupid ralph nader is) the silence from the audience is deafening. I guess it goes over alright on CNN where there is no live audience and Larry King will laugh at anything, but, man, on Leno and Politically Incorrect, it's just downright embarrasing. I mean, the guy from "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer" is getting bigger laughs with his political observations than O'Rourke, who is supposedly the brilliant, caustic political humorist of the bunch. Of course, I haven't read this book, but I have skimmed through enough of his "humorous essays" in Rolling Stone to know what to expect - "..we know that george bush is not going to be a president who can talk his way out of a problem" and "..during Bush's inauguration ceremony, Ralph Nader was somewhere eating a tofu cookie"..- oh yeah, far more sophisticated and insightful than anything on SNL. I guess this is a good book if you like this kind of thing. But if you're expecting to read something provocative about the current state of the world and which may have a few lines that make you laugh, you would do much better to read something by David Brinkly or William Safire or Monica Lewinsky who, although not known for their side-splitting senses of humor, are a lot funnier than O'Rourke, and they aren't even trying that hard.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not his best
Review: O'Rourke is back with his latest broadsides in this book, which is a series of reprinted essays loosely framed as monologues given to his household. This is of course an homage to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and does not work particularly well. There is a reason why Holmes' work is in obscurity... Nevertheless, any collection by P.J. is bound to be entertaining, and this one is good. It's also rare to find a funny book which has a conservative/libertarian point of view. After all, how many conservative writers/commentators do you know who are actually funny? Most are simply obnoxious, a la Rush Limbaugh - O'Rourke is funny, and the writing is good. This is a worthy collection - just don't expect the high level of "Holidays in Hell" or "Parliament of Whores".
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not his best
Review: O'Rourke is back with his latest broadsides in this book, which is a series of reprinted essays loosely framed as monologues given to his household. This is of course an homage to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and does not work particularly well. There is a reason why Holmes' work is in obscurity... Nevertheless, any collection by P.J. is bound to be entertaining, and this one is good. It's also rare to find a funny book which has a conservative/libertarian point of view. After all, how many conservative writers/commentators do you know who are actually funny? Most are simply obnoxious, a la Rush Limbaugh - O'Rourke is funny, and the writing is good. This is a worthy collection - just don't expect the high level of "Holidays in Hell" or "Parliament of Whores".
Rating: 
Summary: The Sofa Needs Reupholstering
Review: P. J. O'Rourke at his best is acerbic, hyperbolic, and insightful. His genius for satire can sit somewhere near Jonathan Swift, especially when O'Rourke reflects facts through a fun-house mirror. Observations become an emblematic retinue for O'Rourke's underlying thesis, and the thesis is made human through humor. Readers often laugh first at others' folly, then recognize themselves in the mirror. The CEO of the Sofa has both laugh-out-loud-at-them and laugh-out-loud-at-me moments. When O'Rourke hits his stride on fatherhood, teenage driving, and travel in India, he brings the folly of others and ourselves into view. The Sofa is unfortunately threadbare as the other 200-odd pages are uncomfortably self-indulgent. O'Rourke repeatedly bemoans both the lost days of his youth and that he spent them in misguided delirium (sounds more like mid-life crisis tempered by mid-life morals). His supercilious observations on the Democratic neighbors and the Political Nut lack the steely-eyed confidence of earlier works and are rather shaky literary threads holding this whole cloth together. In short, Sofa is reminiscent of a dulling author offering up lesser essays. To fill out the book he stuffs around the original pieces all those clever, undeveloped ideas found in his desk on scraps of paper. O'Rourke can pour himself a celebratory drink because his desk is now clean, but the Sofa is in need of reupholstering.
Rating: 
Summary: O'Rourke got a little older, but the attitude remains
Review: P. J. O'Rourke can inject more humorous insight into some of the dullest subjects than anybody else writing today. His caustic wit and blend of skeptical conservatism, often well-oiled with gin and always with a healthy irreverance for do gooders, allows him to pack a good quip into almost every sentence. He takes the mundane, the politically correct, and the traditional and stands all of them on their respective heads. His take on child rearing books as a good description of management training is spot on. His hard knocks on both Gore and Bush during the campaign are much more illuminating than what we get from the mainstream press. His acerbic review of Hillary Clinton's "It takes a village" finally puts that ill-conceived book and concept to rest. His general maturation from a young, hip conservative to a middle-aged one might make some old fans and current skeptics wince, but he has not mellowed with age. Yes, you have to have a certain sense of irony or cynicism to enjoy O'Rourke. For those who do, it is a fun read.
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