return to home  
Join   |  Gift   |  Member Login   |  Library Login
BookBrowse Mobile
Follow Us: 
   Summary and Book Reviews

Little Green Men: Summary and book reviews of Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley, plus links to an excerpt from Little Green Men and a biography of Christopher Buckley.

Little Green Men

Little Green Men
by Christopher Buckley
Hardcover: Apr 1999,
300 pages.
Paperback: Feb 2000,
320 pages.

Publication information
Author Information
Critics' Opinion:   
Readers' Rating:    Not Yet Rated
About BookBrowse Rankings
Share: 
Buy This Book

BOOK SUMMARY

In 1994, Christopher Buckley published one of the most acclaimed and successful comic novels of the decade, Thank You for Smoking. Now Buckley returns to the strange land of Washington, D.C., in Little Green Men, a millennial comedy of manners about aliens and pundits . . . and how much they have in common.

The reluctant hero of this hilarious novel is John Oliver Banion, a stuffy Washington talk-show host, whose privileged life is thrown into upheaval when aliens abduct him from his exclusive country-club golf course.

But were his gray-skinned captors aliens . . . or something far more sinister? After Banion is abducted again--this time in Palm Springs--he believes he has been chosen by the extraterrestrials to champion the most important cause of the millennium, and he embarks on a crusade, appearing before a convention of UFO believers and demanding that Congress and the White House seriously investigate UFOs. His friends and family suspect that Banion is having some kind of manic-depressive midlife crisis and urge him to seek therapy before his credibility as a pillar of the punditocracy is ruined.

So John Oliver Banion must choose: keep his establishment status or become the leader of millions of impassioned and somewhat scruffy new friends who want to expose the government's secret alien agenda.

Little Green Men proves once and for all that the truth is out there. Way out there. And it reaffirms Christopher Buckley's status as the funniest humanoid writer in the universe.

Media Reviews

  Los Angeles Times Book Review
One of the best and surest political humorists in America.

  The Boston Globe
One of the rarest specimens, the authentically comic writer.

  The Washington Monthly
Washington's pre-eminent satirist.

  Publishers Weekly
A smoother, funnier and more refined heir apparent to Art Buchwald's throne.

  Kirkus Reviews
...neither the embattled Banion nor any of its lesser personalities remotely resembles a developed character. The dizzily mixed result isn't much of a novel, though it's a highly amusing and likable entertainment.

Author Blurb Joseph Heller
Little Green Men is a delicious, ingenious treat. Christopher Buckley is an author of many talents, with a range of abilities that includes a penetrating comic intelligence and a deft flair for storytelling that makes this novel a truly joyous page-turner.

Recent Reader Reviews

Review (not rated) by Anonymous
Rick Yoose
Wow. That's all I can say. Christopher Buckley's "Little Green Men" was honestly the best book I've read in quite some time. I'm a big fan of sci-fi books and picked it up thinking it belonged to that genre. When I...   Read More

Readalikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Little Green Men, try these:


A Hole In Texas
by Herman Wouk

A rollicking Washington tale about a media firestorm swirling around a vast Hole in Texas and one obscure scientist who gets swept up in the vortex.

Sick Puppy
by Carl Hiaasen

Brilliantly twisted entertainment wrapped around a powerful ecological plea, Sick Puppy gleefully lives up to its title and gives us Hiaasen at his riotous and muckraking best.


These are 2 of the 4 readalike suggestions for Little Green Men. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.

Books with similar themes



Become a Member
Golden Boy
Editor's Choice
  •  May 23 
  •  May 21 
  •  May 20 
And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini

And the Mountains Echoed Jacket

Khaled Hosseini has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations
Helga's Diary
Helga Weiss

Helga's Diary Jacket

The remarkable diary of a young girl who survived the Holocaust—appearing in English for the first time.
Fever
Mary Beth Keane

Fever Jacket

A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Click Here
   Most Recent Blog Entries
Movies Based on Books: Summer 2013 (May - August)
Jewish Young Adult Books That Are Not About The Holocaust
Books to Give This Mother's Day
rss  RSS   rss  subscribe
Recent Reader Reviews
Two Lives by Vikram Seth
Two Lives is a memoir written by international best-selling author, Vikram Seth. In this interesting and engaging book, Seth writes about his great... read more
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight... read more
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on... read more
RSS RSS feed More...  
Most Viewed This Week
1. Sold
Patricia McCormick
2. Unbroken
Laura Hillenbrand
3. And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini
4. A Child Called It
Dave Pelzer
5. Tethered
Amy Mackinnon
More...
Book Club Recommendations
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
by Jeanette Winterson
Paperback (Mar/13)
Eleanor & Park
by Rainbow Rowell
Hardback (Feb/13)
The House Girl
by Tara Conklin
Paperback (Oct/13)
The Painted Girls
by Cathy Marie Buchanan
Hardback (Jan/13)
More...
First Impressions
Members read and review books often months before they're published. See what they think in First Impressions!
The Last Girl
by Jane Casey
Four Stars            (May/13)
Golden Boy
by Abigail Tarttelin
4.5 Stars            (May/13)
The Sisterhood
by Helen Bryan
Four Stars            (Apr/13)
The Caretaker
by A .X. Ahmad
Four Stars            (May/13)
More...
  Latest BookBrowse News
Judge rules unused Borders gift cards to be worthless (May 23 2013)
Borders owes nothing to holders of roughly $210.5 million of gift cards that had not been used by the time the bookstore chain shut down, a Manhattan federal... Full Story
rss RSS feed More...
 
BookBrowse Poll
Q: Which of these Summer movies based on books would you like to see? (Info on each movie here)
The Great Gatsby
Epic
Man of Steel
World War Z
The Lone Ranger
The Wolverine
R.I.P.D.
Percy Jackson
Paranoia
The Mortal Instruments
Select Any That Apply
Search: Title or Author
Free Newsletters
The Light Between Oceans

Online Book Club
More about
The Comfort of Lies
Join the discussion!


Win This Book!
On Sal Mal Lane


"Piercingly intelligent and shatter-your-heart profound."

Enter To Win Now!

wordplay
Solve this clue:
"I Y N P O T Solution, Y P O T P"

and be entered
to win....
frame top
New Author
Interviews
Menna van Praag
Erica Brown
Helga Weiss
Kate Morton
frame bottom
HOME Book Submissions | Advertising | Library Subscriptions | Reviewing for BookBrowse | Contact Us