The novelist Christopher Buckley says that The Baby Boom, the just-published memoir/history by P. J. O’Rourke, is O’Rourke’s best book. The Scrapbook is reluctant to disagree with any judgment from so authoritative a source. Plus, we’ve read The Baby Boom, and between chortles, snorts, guffaws, and several spells of stunned admiration at the sheer inventiveness of the prose, we have come to conclude that Buckley is right on the evidence. Fans of O’Rourke—our indispensable contributing editor as well as author of Parliament of Whores, Eat the Rich, Holidays in Hell, and several other books that have taken their place as classics of American satire and social commentary—will recognize what a large claim this is. The baby boom’s most gifted humorist has taken on his richest subject, the boomers themselves. We don’t want to spoil the suspense, but the boomers don’t come off too well. Your chances of making this new year a happy one will greatly increase if you tee it up by buying, and reading, P. J.’s best book (so far!).