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The title of P.J. O’Rourke’s newest book is a mouthful: Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed to Be–With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn. Its contents can be reduced to this: A hilarious ode to environmental enemy No. 1 from one of the country’s best living satirists. O’Rourke, whose humor and writing have won praise even from cast-iron liberals, is currently the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, so expect more than simply partisan gags from the author of Parliament of Whores and Eat the Rich. The forum will feature O’Rourke at full throttle, discussing America’s (and his own) lifelong car obsession. As sharp as the man can be, greenies and granola types shouldn’t shy away from O’Rourke’s tendency to reverse his Cadillac-sized thesis over one’s head again and again. Like the used car salesman who’s done his job right, O’Rourke will leave you thinking you got a great deal.
O’ROURKE SPEAKS AT NOON AT THE CATO INSTITUTE, 1000 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. NW. FREE. (202) 842 0200.