Holidays in Heck

June 27, 2011
In this cheeky follow-up to Holidays in Hell, former war correspondent O'Rourke trades battle zones for more appealing travel destinations, often with his family in tow. Deciding after the Iraq War that he was "too old to be scared stiff and too stiff to sleep on the ground," O'Rourke switches to travel writing after 21 years covering various conflicts. The exoticâa sailing trip to the Galápagos Islands in "Republicans Evolving" or a horse trek through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan in "A Horse of a Different Color"ârub shoulders with the more mundaneâa family skiing vacation in "Round on the Ends and âHi!' in the Middle," a trip to Disneyland in "The Decline and Fall of Tomorrow"âand all of them share O'Rourke's razor wit. The family skiing vacation is made more hilarious by its being in Ohio (his eldest daughter doesn't like long hills), and the plethora of wildlife observed during the Galápagos jaunt become stand-ins for our country's political parties. The majority of essays were assigned by Forbes Life and reworked by O'Rourke for this collection; "Capitol Gains," the O'Rourke family's aborted tour of the Washington, D.C., sights is previously unpublished. O'Rourke loses none of his sly humor, finding many opportunities to lampoon American politics under his new guise as a traveling family man.

October 15, 2011
The prolific cultural commentator offers a miscellany of (mostly) travel pieces, a follow-up of sorts to his collection of war journalism, Holidays in Hell (1988). Having retired from the hazards of war, O'Rourke (Don't Vote--It Just Encourages the Bastards, 2010, etc.) faces the challenge of learning to travel for leisure with his family: "What is this thing called fun? To judge by traveling with my wife and daughters it has something to do with shopping for clothes." Many of the essays are unabashed paeans to the pastimes of wealthy, middle-aged Republicans: The author visits ski resorts, hunting preserves and even a tour of the Galápagos Islands. Unfortunately, despite lovingly described meals and leisure, these serve as excuses for O'Rourke to rail against uptight liberals who love perverted art and oppressive government and hate guns, hunting, the outdoors and good times. This predictable rhetorical structure reaches its nadir in an irritating essay on the 2005 Venice Biennale, where O'Rourke expresses a strange anger towards the entire edifice of contemporary art: "The Guerrilla Girls are too young to remember what a babe Gloria Steinem was…[and] too old to realize how beside the point their point is." The problem here is not the author's conservative views, but rather that his writing has become increasingly sour and lazy. The better pieces are built more around straightforward reportage and observation, such as two essays narrating his trips through the new economic powerhouse of China. He also provides colorful, earthy descriptive passages regarding stag hunts in Britain, extreme horseback riding in the wilds of Kyrgyzstan, a poignant look at his bout with cancer and a brief jaunt to Kabul, Afghanistan. Red meat for his fans, unlikely to convert new ones.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2011

O'Rourke, conservative humorist and best-selling author, offers up a collection of entertaining essays, most of which have been previously published in the Atlantic Monthly and Forbes. They display a less provocative O'Rourke than fans who enjoyed Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance might wish for; snide jabs at President Obama or people and things that could be deemed liberal are kept to a minimum. O'Rourke's stories of taking his three young children to Hong Kong and on a skiing trip to Ohio are the most appealing, tame, and funny (he describes his seven-year-old daughter skiing as "part ballerina and part frog"). Other essays take him horse-trekking in Kyrgyzstan, up the Yangtze River in China, and back to the future, as in the 1950s House of the Future at Disneyland. VERDICT Readers looking to reinforce their love or hate for O'Rourke's opinions will find little meat here, but he's an engaging writer, regardless of the topic. [See Prepub Alert, 5/9/11.]--Linda M. Kaufmann, Massachusetts Coll. of Liberal Arts Lib., North Adam

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.