Born November 14, 1947 in Toledo, OH. His father was a car salesman and his mother was a clerk at a grade school. Patrick Jake O'Rourke has two younger sisters, Delphine and Cathleen. After completing his undergraduate studies at Miami University in Oxford, OH, he won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, where he received his MA in English. While many men would be content with the steady stream of booze, drugs and nubile co-eds available in the late 1960s to a leftist English grad major, O'Rourke expanded his partying potential even further by writing for various underground newspapers, including one called Harry. O'Rourke adopted the pen name P.J. once he started writing, but initially thought it sounded odd when people actually started addressing him as P.J. as a result.
One of the most noteworthy aspects of O'Rourke's career is his gradual transformation from bleeding-heart liberal to cigar-chomping conservative/libertarian. Fortunately, his razor-sharp wit clearly survived the move, and, like a true curmudgeon, he spares no one from the ridicule they deserve.
O'Rourke has written countless articles for a wide variety of magazines since leaving his editor-in-chief post at National Lampoon in 1981. Whether reminiscing about various absurd feats of hedonism of his youth, railing against the powers that be, or breaking the complex factors of international politics into witty comedic jabs, O'Rourke has proven himself a world-class satirist and social commentator. The libertarian Cato Institute has named him their Mencken Research Fellow, which provided O'Rourke with much of the research ammunition behind his cynical take on economics, Eat The Rich.
In 1995, he married Tina, a PR executive from Oglivy, Adams, and Reinhard. They now have two children and alternate between homes in New Hampshire and Washington, D.C..
Books
- The CEO of the Sofa 2001 - Grove/Atlantic - ISBN 0871138255
- Eat The Rich: A Treatise on Economics 1998 - Grove/Atlantic - ISBN 0742943410
- The Enemies List: Flushing Out Liberals in the Age of Clinton 1996 - Grove/Atlantic - ISBN 0871136325
- Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut: 25 Years of P.J. O'Rourke 1995 - Grove/Atlantic - ISBN 0871136090
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All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Plague, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, and Poverty 1995 - Grove/Atlantic - ISBN 0871136112
- Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government 1992 - Vintage Books - ISBN 0679737898
- Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer
1992 - Vintage Books - ISBN 0679742018
- Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny about This?" 1988 - Vintage Books - ISBN 0679724222
- The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig 1987 - Pocket Books - ISBN 0871136864
- Republican Party Reptile 1986 - Grove/Atlantic - ISBN 0871131455
- Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People 1983 - Grove/Atlantic - ISBN 087113375X
Forewords and Excerpts
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