| View Larger Image | Boomsday | Paperbackby Christopher Buckley (Author)
| List Price: | $13.99 | |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Twelve | | Page Count: | 336 Pages | | Publication Date: | May 16, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 574,331th |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
BOOMSDAY'S heroine is Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger who incites massive political turmoil when, outraged over mounting Social Security debt, she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of her outraged peers ("Generation Whatever") and an ambitious Senator seeking to gain the youth vote in his presidential campaign. With the help of Washington's greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (they call it "Transitioning") all the way to the White House, over the forceful objections of the Religious Right and, of course, Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement resorts. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 106 reviews)
|
Trying too hard? by Elizabeth A. Dice (Salem, MA)  3 Stars
November 19, 2009
I was disappointed in this book and actually didn't finish it. I had read Supreme Courtship and enjoyed it a lot. This book, however, seemed, as another reviewer mentioned, silly rather than satirical. In the beginning, I was intrigued by the main characters, but they quickly became cartoonish and I lost interest. For example, it seemed completely out of character that a woman who feels so intensely about her causes that she will go to jail for them would work a day job that required using outrageous spin to keep reprehensible clients out of the courts. Buckley can be funny and clever, but this book just seemed ham-handed. I may try another one of his books sometime, but not until the memory of this one has faded.
| |
Tra-La-La-BOOMS-De-Ay, His Book Sure Made My Day by Franklin the Mouse (Gorham, ME USA)  5 Stars
September 23, 2009
After reading a very huge downer of a book on the dysfunctional juvenile justice system, I needed a sure-fire pick-me-up. As usual, Mr. Buckley came to the rescue. "Boomsday" is another fine example of why the author won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Delightful pandemonium begins on the first page and never slows down. Politicians, businessmen, lobbyists, public relations representatives, religious leaders and the general American populace are lampooned about their narcissistic and hypocritical ways. No one is spared the author's sarcastic, playful wit. His trademark of continually interjecting ever-more outrageous scenarios embellished with snappy dialogue is why Mr. Buckley is one of my favorite authors in the area of political farce. A fast read that will delight wonks and neophytes alike.
| |
Boomsday by Hanna Tsuhara 5 Stars
September 22, 2009
This book is hilarious. Buckley smashes Washington and politics with wicked satire. Also gets us under 30's thinking more about social security and the impact that the internet has on us all as a communication/motivation device.
| |
satire... but it kind of creeped me out... by David Fortner (mid-east Missouri) 3 Stars
July 07, 2009
I listened to the unabridged CDs.
Given the governmental bailout and takeover of the financial and automotive industries along with taking control of the tobacco industry... As well as the absurd dilution of the dollar... and the indication of yet another costly stimulus package in the works the premise of this book went from satirical to prophetical. And as much as I began enjoying the listen it quickly began to creep me out. I can actually envision this or something similar happening.
However, for my hourly commute it was definitely worth the listen.
| |
Ridiculously Scary by David Zimmerman (Baton Rouge, LA USA)  4 Stars
June 18, 2009
This hilarious book is a political satire that reminded me of Mark Helprin's Freddy and Fredericka. The federal budget deficit and US economy have reached the point where even the Japanese and Chinese won't buy government bonds. Entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare promise to make a bad situation only worse or even fatal as 74 million Baby Boomers retire. The Swiftian solution - Voluntary Transition - legal assisted suicide for seniors to get at least 20% of them off the federal balance sheet. By day Cassandra Devine works for a Washington PR firm advising mink ranchers and oil polluters. By night she finds the pulse of Generation Whatever, the young workers who will have to fund Baby Boomer retirements with ever-increasing payroll taxes, and Voluntary Transition becomes more than a crazy idea. It grows legs and a body and morphs into an actual Presidential candidate. But that's enough plot spoiler.
Buckley's wild characters and impossible scenarios seem all too plausible in the current environment of multiple wars and trillion dollar deficits, but they'll elicit many a real "LOL" along the way. My main quibble was with an overload of acronym-driven interest groups, few of which have much to do with the plot. Aside from the prospect of collapse of the US economy (the 2008 version Buckley predicts pretty well, even though he wrote this in 2006), the scariest element of the book is a fictional software system, RIP-Ware that can predict dates of death with 99% accuracy. You can imagine who'd love to have this kind of information, and they do, at least in "Boomsday". Four stars for imagination, satire and prescience, but a little short on LOLs to match Helprin's five-star writing.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Florence of Arabia: A Novel
by Christopher Buckley (Author)
The bestselling author who made mincemeat of political correctness in Thank You for Smoking, conspiracy theories in Little Green Men, and Presidential indiscretions No Way to Treat a First Lady now takes on the hottest topic in the entire world–Arab-American relations–in a blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn’t delight.
Appalled by the punishment of her rebellious friend Nazrah, youngest and most petulant wife of Prince Bawad of Wasabia, Florence Farfarletti...
| 
| No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novel
by Christopher Buckley (Author)
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Elizabeth Tyler MacMann, the ambitious First Lady of the United States (and known in the tabloids as “Lady Bethmac”), is on trial for the death of her philandering husband, and the only man who can save her is the boyfriend she jilted in law school—now the most shameless defense attorney in America. Published to rave reviews, No Way to Treat a First Lady is a hilariously warped love story for our time set in the funniest place in America:...
| 
| The White House Mess
by Christopher Buckley (Author)
An uproarious comedy about a presidential administration totally off the rails. This fictional political memoir by the Personal Assistant to President Tucker, Herbert Wadlough, offers a unique, utterly self-serving inside view of the ill-fated Tucker administration, 1989-1993. "A brilliant satire . . . A witty, very funny, intricate spoof."--Bob Woodward.
| 
| Little Green Men: A Novel
by Christopher Buckley (Author), Random House Inc. (Author)
The strange land of Washington, D.C., is teeming with aliens, politicians, and other bizarre life-forms. Beltway insider and stuffy talk show host John Oliver Banion finds his privileged life turned topsy-turvy when he is abducted by aliens from his exclusive country-club golf course. When he is abducted a second time, he believes he has found his true calling and, in the most pasionate crusade of his life, demands that Congress and the White House seriously investigate the existence of...
| 
| Thank You for Smoking: A Novel
by Christopher Buckley (Author)
Nobody blows smoke like Nick Naylor. He’s a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies–in other words, a flack for cigarette companies, paid to promote their product on talk and news shows. The problem? He’s so good at his job, so effortlessly unethical, that he’s become a target for both anti-tobacco terrorists and for the FBI. In a country where half the people want to outlaw pleasure and the other want to sell you a disease, what will become of the original Puff Daddy?
|
|
|
