Product Description

Definitely not for the easily offended, Our Dumb Century was a New York Times #1 bestseller chronicling 100 years of American history with dry humor and cynicism. This Miniature Edition distills the brilliant wit and satire of the original from "America's Finest News Source.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31190 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's America's most popular newspaper, but there may be a few people out there who are sadly unaware of The Onion's mighty journalistic legacy. To combat this cultural illiteracy, Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers and his writing staff have assembled this collection of great front pages from the last one hundred years. Here is just a sampling of the headlines: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Boasts: "No Man Can Stop Me"; AWESOME! Nation Wowed by Tremendous Hindenburg Explosion; Martin Luther King: "I Had a Really Weird Dream Last Night"; Clinton Denies Lewinsky Allegations: "We Did Not Have Sex, We Made Love." And those are just the headlines; the stories themselves are all masterpieces of the journalist's trade. Of course, readers with delicate sensibilities may find some of these accounts a bit too risqué, and perhaps even tasteless. (Among the potential offenders: Rosa Parks's decision to "screw this bus shit" and take a cab.) But if you're looking for an antidote to all the 20th-century hoopla promulgated by stuffed shirts like Peter Jennings and Harold Evans--not to mention the best history book since 1066 and All That--then Our Dumb Century is the one for you. --Ron Hogan

Customer Reviews

This is why satire was invented
Satire is used to perfection in this book, a ficticious recounting of the headlines of the 20th Century. As the editor of this newspaper calls it, this is "funny fake news."

The great thing about this book is that the stories are often related with the utter indifference one suspects reporters must develop after years on the job, packaged for the short attention span the public often has. These articles take the folly and "real" stories behind the stories, the ones that were never talked about in their day, and prints them as front page and headline news. Try, for example: "Eleanor Roosevelt, Nation Hails our First Lesbian President." Or regarding Pearl Harbor, "Dastardly Japs Bomb Colonially Occupied US Non-State." Or how about terming Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio's magical appeal as, "Nation Captived by Fairytale Wedding of Sullen Loner, Depressed Pill-Popper." Or the optimistic, "Drugs Win Drug War" alongside a picture of a bong-smoking man in tie-dye approaching the presidential podium. Page after page of "reprinted" front pages (a joke in itself, because there certainly was no Onion in 1904) makes this a great read which literally brought tears to my eyes.

Life ain't always pretty, but with the Onion it is always funny.

Andrew Parodi

A genuine, 100%, instant comic masterpiece
I mean it - and I'm a hard man to please - even more so when it comes to Americans and what they often deem to be funny. My only caveat is a requirement for any reader to be capable of revelling in absurdly idiotic humour - think the absolute cream of Monty Python, Blackadder and Private Eye all rolled into one.

Dumb Century is a true piece of comic genius - incredible detail, a hit/miss gag ratio unmatched in anything I've read or seen recently. This is a book I will treasure for a very long time, dip into again and again, and dig out the second my future kids start struggling to maintain their interest in A-Level history. Brilliant.

The distilled essence of the Onion
I have always been a little disappointed with the weekly editions of the Onion. The few comedic gems are tarnished by the more mundane body of material. Of course I have to admit that it is an immense task to publish a weekly full newspaper parody that keeps up with current events as well as the Onion does. So it is understandable that not every article reverberates with the hilarity of "Jesus converts to Islam". This book gives the writers of the Onion the opportunity to concentrate the key events of each year of the past century into one or two pages of material. The result is that all of the writers' talents shine through. The headlines and stories give an educated, irreverent, sometimes a tad offensive, and sometimes remarkably insightful twist to the most important events of the American twentieth century. The book is not perfect. I felt it faltered slightly from the mid 80s to the present (there could be a correlation between this sentiment and the fact that the period from the mid 80s to the present is the only period which I have personally experienced). Nevertheless, this is a wonderful book which I rate right up there with such classics as "Bored of the Rings".