Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice and Alcohol-free Beer [Paperback]

This book is probably the best point of entry into PJ's world, representing as it does a perfect fulcrum between the sardonic insults he hurled so devastatingly in 1987's Holidays From Hell, and the exasperated elder-statesman-of-journalism musings of his more recent work. The last quarter or so of Give War A Chance is taken up with his despatches from the frontline of the Gulf War, and are worth the price of the book alone. Before this, however, we visit Berlin in November 1989, Paraguay, post-Cold War Kiev and Vietnam, and free elections in Nicaragua, with detours through the horribly fatuous autobiographical mumblings of Lee Iacocca and Jimmy Carter, and pause on our travels to witness the cruel humiliation of the entire mid-eighties famine relief industry (the banner over the stocks displays the excellent legend: Fiddling While Africa Starves).

PJ O'Rourke is frightening to his enemies for two reasons. Firstly, the most bile-encrusted 'sandalista' (his word) would have a stroke trying to suppress his or her seizures of mirth while reading, for example, the chapter on Dr Ruth Westheimer. O'Rourke is almost intolerably funny. He drops one-liners into the ends of paragraphs with such an incisive eye (and ear) for timing that you have to give up on the narrative for a moment and go back to savour the passage again. Quotes taken out of context generally don't do PJ any favours, but I offer this one nonetheless: 'It's impossible to get decent Chinese takeout in China, Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba, and that's all you need to know about communism.' And that's all you need to know about O'Rourke's punchy, wit-and-wisdom-laden prose style.

The second reason that reading this book will put the willies up anyone who wears left-liberal clothes is that, while O'Rourke is in deadly earnest about what he believes in, he nonetheless lampoons himself, his own profession of journalism, and US politics, with a mercilessness that matches anything he writes about his leftist bugbears. He comes across as an intelligent, cultured person, with impressive knowledge in areas such as architecture, history and literature; and, hardest of all for those instinctively prejudiced against him to acknowledge, he's a kind and humane man, with a bedrock of principles beneath the gonzo exterior. Almost every book he's written has lots to commend it, but Give War A Chance is the third in PJ's late 80s/early 90s trio of really great ones. It's just possible, I suppose, to read this book without having your thought-processes stimulated; your funny-bone, however, will NOT escape.

This book is probably the best point of entry into PJ's world, representing as it does a perfect fulcrum between the sardonic insults he hurled so devastatingly in 1987's Holidays From Hell, and the exasperated elder-statesman-of-journalism musings of his more recent work. The last quarter or so of Give War A Chance is taken up with his despatches from the frontline of the Gulf War, and are worth the price of the book alone. Before this, however, we visit Berlin in November 1989, Paraguay, post-Cold War Kiev and Vietnam, and free elections in Nicaragua, with detours through the horribly fatuous autobiographical mumblings of Lee Iacocca and Jimmy Carter, and pause on our travels to witness the cruel humiliation of the entire mid-eighties famine relief industry (the banner over the stocks displays the excellent legend: Fiddling While Africa Starves).

PJ O'Rourke is frightening to his enemies for two reasons. Firstly, the most bile-encrusted 'sandalista' (his word) would have a stroke trying to suppress his or her seizures of mirth while reading, for example, the chapter on Dr Ruth Westheimer. O'Rourke is almost intolerably funny. He drops one-liners into the ends of paragraphs with such an incisive eye (and ear) for timing that you have to give up on the narrative for a moment and go back to savour the passage again. Quotes taken out of context generally don't do PJ any favours, but I offer this one nonetheless: 'It's impossible to get decent Chinese takeout in China, Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba, and that's all you need to know about communism.' And that's all you need to know about O'Rourke's punchy, wit-and-wisdom-laden prose style.

The second reason that reading this book will put the willies up anyone who wears left-liberal clothes is that, while O'Rourke is in deadly earnest about what he believes in, he nonetheless lampoons himself, his own profession of journalism, and US politics, with a mercilessness that matches anything he writes about his leftist bugbears. He comes across as an intelligent, cultured person, with impressive knowledge in areas such as architecture, history and literature; and, hardest of all for those instinctively prejudiced against him to acknowledge, he's a kind and humane man, with a bedrock of principles beneath the gonzo exterior. Almost every book he's written has lots to commend it, but Give War A Chance is the third in PJ's late 80s/early 90s trio of really great ones. It's just possible, I suppose, to read this book without having your thought-processes stimulated; your funny-bone, however, will NOT escape.