Showing results by author "Christopher Buckley" in All Categories

Christopher Buckley at his best: an extraordinary, wide-ranging selection of essays both hilarious and poignant, irreverent and delightful. In his first book of essays since his 1997 best seller, Wry Martinis, Buckley delivers a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing. Listening to these essays is the equivalent of being in the company of a tremendously witty and enlightening companion.

Just as Calvin Trillin and Joan Didion gave readers solace and insight into the experience of losing a spouse, Christopher Buckley offers consolation, wit, and warmth to those coping with the death of a parent, while telling a unique personal story of life with legends.

From the bestselling author of Thank You for Smoking and Make Russia Great Again comes a comic tour de force, the story of one man’s “lively and funny” (New York Journal of Books) journey through lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Christopher Buckley's comic thriller takes readers to the Arab land of Matar, where a philandering emir allays his restless wife by allowing her to start a TV network for Arab women. She is joined in this endeavor by a maverick American State Department officer known as Florence, who wants to use the TV network to start a revolution among Islamic women.

London, 1664. Twenty years after the English revolution, the monarchy has been restored, and Charles II sits on the throne. The men who conspired to kill his father are either dead or disappeared. Baltasar “Balty” St. Michel is 24 and has no skills and no employment. He gets by on handouts from his brother-in-law Samuel Pepys, an officer in the king’s navy. Fed up with his needy relative, Pepys offers Balty a job in the New World. He is to track down two missing judges who were responsible for the execution of the last king, Charles I.

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, DC, 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.

One of this country's leading political satirists dangles before us a tantalizing novel whose protagonist has a great deal in common with a recent First Lady. Beth MacIntyre, First Lady of the United States, has been charged with the murder of her husband, a Presidential Lothario of the first water. She is accused of throwing a historic Paul Revere spittoon during a bedroom spat, putting an unfortunately fatal dent in the President's lust-filled head.

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 Nick Naylor?

President of the United States Donald Vanderdamp is having a hell of a time getting his nominees appointed to the Supreme Court. After one nominee is rejected for insufficiently appreciating To Kill A Mockingbird, the president chooses someone so beloved by voters that the Senate won't have the guts to reject her.

Cassandra Devine, a young Washington spin doctor and blogger, suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. This proposal catches on with citizens outraged about Social Security debt and a senator seeking the youth vote for his presidential bid. With the help of Washington's greatest PR strategist, Cassandra and the senator try to ride the issue of euthanasia to the White House.

In “the Trump satire we’ve been waiting for” (The Washington Post), award-winning and best-selling author of Thank You for Smoking delivers a hilarious and whipsmart fake memoir by Herb Nutterman - Donald Trump’s seventh chief of staff - who has written the ultimate tell-all about Trump and Russia.

In an attempt to gain congressional approval for a top-secret weapons system, Washington lobbyist "Bird" McIntyre teams up with sexy, outspoken neocon Angel Templeton to pit the American public against the Chinese. When Bird fails to uncover an authentic reason to slander the nation, he and Angel put the Washington media machine to work, spreading a rumor that the Chinese secret service is working to assassinate the Dalai Lama.

The year is 1517. Dismas is a relic hunter: one who procures "authentic" religious relics for wealthy and influential clients. His two most important patrons are Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony; and soon-to-be Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz. While Frederick is drawn to the recent writing of Martin Luther, Albrecht pursues the financial and political benefits of religion and seeks to buy a cardinalship through the selling of indulgences.

Before Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Doonesbury, there was Art Buchwald. For more than fifty years, from 1949 to 2006, Art Buchwald’s Pulitzer Prize-winning column of political satire and biting wit made him one of the most widely read American humorists and a popular player in the Washington world of Ethel and Ted Kennedy, Ben Bradlee, and Katharine Graham. Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State, called Buchwald the “greatest satirist in the English language since Pope and Swift.”

On trial for assassinating her husband, the president of the United States, Beth MacMann hires an old flame from law school as her defense attorney. In this hilarious send-up of both politicos and lawyers, Buckley reestablishes himself as one of today's premiere satirists.

Cassandra Devine, a young Washington spin doctor and blogger, suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. This proposal catches on with citizens outraged about Social Security debt and a senator seeking the youth vote for his presidential bid. With the help of Washington's greatest PR strategist, Cassandra and the senator try to ride the issue of euthanasia to the White House.

In God Is My Broker, Buckley aims his sharp humor at the self-help gurus; and the likes of Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, and Deepak Chopra had better watch out. Down to their last $304, the abbots in this story make a bunch of money playing the stock market - and then get carried away in today's commercialism and self-help principles when they begin to market their homemade wine. From redecorating their decrepit digs in the "peasant chic" style to outrageous television commercials, these monks will stop at nothing to get to the top of the wine business!

An evening of readings and discussion: Heller's friends and colleagues including Christopher Buckley, Robert Gottlieb and Mike Nichols, revisit his classic black comedy set at the end of WWII, one of the most important books about patriotism, honor, the absurdities of war and beauracracy of the twentieth century. The conversation is led by Lesley Stahl. An excerpt is performed by Scott Shepherd (Gatz). "The rock and roll of novels...There's no book like it." (Norman Mailer)

The best-selling 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.

This is an incredible story. The author, a failed, alcoholic Wall Street trader, had retreated to a monastery. It, too, was failing. Then, one fateful day, Brother Ty decided to let God be his broker--and not only saved the monastery but discovered the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth. Brother Ty's remarkable success has been studied at the nation's leading business schools and scrutinized by Wall Street's greatest minds, but until now the secret to his 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth have been available only to a select few.