P.J. O'Rourke Biography
P.J. O'Rourke is the best-selling
author of several books, including Modern Manners, The Bachelor Home Companion, Republican
Party Reptile, Holidays in Hell, Parliament of Whores, Give War
A Chance, All the Trouble in the World, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence,
and a Bad Haircut, and now, Eat the Rich.
Born in 1947 in Toledo, Ohio, he graduated from Miami
University in Oxford, Ohio, then won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study for an MA in
English at Johns Hopkins. In the early 1970s, he wrote for and edited several
"underground" publications, including a Baltimore weekly called Harry.
He joined the National Lampoon in 1973, became its managing editor in 1975, and
was named editor-in-chief in 1978. While at the Lampoon he created, with Doug
Kenney, The National Lampoon 1964 Yearbook Parody and, with John Hughes, The
National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody.
After leaving the Lampoon in 1981, O'Rourke became
a freelance writer for such insanely diverse publications as Car and Driver, The
American Spectator, Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Automobile,
House and Garden, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review,
Parade, Smart, Harper's and Rolling Stone, where he is
currently the magazine's Foreign Affairs Desk Chief.
O'Rourke's books have been translated into a dozen
languages and have been bestsellers worldwide. Three have been New York Times
hardcover bestsellers: Parliament of Whores and Give War A Chance, both
of which went to #1, as well as All the Trouble in the World. When not on the
road, he divides his time between New Hampshire and Washington, DC.
This biography was last updated on 06/15/2011.
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