Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley at his best: an extraordinary, wide-ranging selection of essays both hilarious and poignant, irreverent and delightful. In his first book of essays since his 1997 bestseller, Wry Martinis, Buckley delivers a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing. Tackling subjects ranging from "How to Teach Your Four-Year-Old to Ski" to "A Short History of the Bug Zapper," and "The Art of Sacking" to literary friendships with Joseph...

With a pajama-clad President Reagan refusing to leave the White House on his successor's Inauguration Day, Buckley has given this farce of Oval Office politics a nearly perfect beginning. Parodying the familiar form of the White House memoir, Buckley recounts the turbulent years of the Democratic Tucker administration, as told by loyalist Herbert Wadlough. Through this former accountant's eyes, we see the in fighting that plagues the White House,...

"London, 1664. Twenty years after the English revolution, the monarchy has been restored and Charles II sits on the throne. The men who conspired to kill his father are either dead or disappeared. Baltasar 'Balty' St. Michel is twenty-four and has no skills and no employment. He gets by on handouts from his brother-in-law Samuel Pepys, an officer in the king's navy. Fed up with his needy relative, Pepys offers Balty a job in the New World. He is to...

"Before Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, and "Doonesbury," there was Art Buchwald. For more than fifty years, from 1950 to 2006, his Pulitzer Prize-winning column of political satire and biting wit made him one of the most widely read American humorists and a popular player in the Washington of Ethel and Ted Kennedy, Ben Bradlee, and Katharine Graham. Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State, called Buchwald the "greatest satirist in...