Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion by Robert Siegel, Onion Staff, The Onion Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion
Book Review: It's Painful How Funny This Book Is
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book just days after the World Trade Center attack, and it forced me to lift my spirits--even when I didn't want them lifted. What a delight it is, and just as clever as the earlier Onion books, too. I hope in this climate of terror and recession that people will find the humor in this wonderful volume (it's not hard to locate).Book Review: Great, but not perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
As I was reading the weekly issue of The Onion on their website a month ago, I saw this new book advertised. I've bought their first two books, so I picked it up on ... a little after it came out, and finished reading it yesterday. Unfortunately, we have another case of sequelitis here...Don't get me wrong, this is a great book, but it's not as quite good as the original. However, it still contains tons of laugh-out-loud, tell-all-your-friends humor that will keep you occupied for hours. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Onion, imagine if South Park and SNL teamed up to write a newspaper with such articles as "Fox Defends Airing of 'When Jews Attack'" and "Fun Toy Banned Because of Three Stupid Dead Kids." These make for hilarious reading, but not if you're offended by (lots of) swearing.
So if you enjoy The Onion, yes, definitely buy this book, it's well worth it; but if you're new to the publication, let me direct you to "The Onion's Finest News Reporting" before you get this one.
Book Review: A book for the ages
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a book to pass on to future generations to share the absuridity that is modern society. The writers of The Onion are brutal, yet painfully funny. Rarely does a book move me to tears from laughter. This one does.Book Review: Hysterical!
Summary: 5 Stars
The problem with satire is that the person writing it frequently has an axe to grind. As a result, it will inevitably be offensive, and hence unappreciated, by a significant portion of the population. The Onion has rather ingeniously avoided by this conundrum by mocking everyone and everything. I don't care what group you choose to affiliate yourself with, you're not human if you aren't laughing out loud, with tears streaming down your face, by the third page of "Dispatches from the Tenth Circle".What the brilliant "Our Dumb Century" did for the 1900's, so too does this book for current events. Through the medium of newspaper "articles", political leaders, musicians, actors, sports heroes, popular culture, etc. are lampooned with brutal accuracy. Most amazing is that in a book that contains literally hundreds of articles, almost all of the entries are remarkably literate. I can only describe them by suggesting that the reader imagine what it would be like if Dennis Miller edited the New York Times. Even when the humor turns lowbrow, as it sometimes does, it is so matter of fact that one can't help but laugh. There's no pretense, no embarrassment, just a deadpan delivery of frequently surreal material.
This book is not for the easily offended, so if you hold your views and idols sacrosanct, skip this one. However, is you can stand to have that which you hold most dear skewered, and laugh about it, you will not regret purchasing this book. In fact I think former VP Al Gore's (I'm a registered Republican, so you can see what strange bed-fellows this book can make) statement on the back cover puts it best: "This publication is destructive to our shared values. Read it yourself and you'll see what I mean. Seriously, what else could make me laugh - much less laugh uproariously - while being offended week after week.?"
Book Review: It's got a lot of layers.
Summary: 5 Stars
The Onion is so funny, and so smart. This is a book you could spend months reading, if only to notice every last joke crammed into every corner. To call it hilarious misses the point--the right word for this book is essential.