Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut: Twenty-Five Years of P.J. O'Rourke

Since most of O'Rourke's (All the Trouble in the World) books are collections, this retrospective is not so much a greatest-hits album as a variably entertaining grab bag of B-sides and other miscellany. There is giddy juvenilia he wrote for the 1970s underground press, including a hilarious hoax piece about Richard Nixon's trip to China. There are several arch tales about the 1960s that O'Rourke published in the National Lampoon, including an amusing attack on communism. His bumptiously ignorant persona serves him well as he explores high-end automobiles and such sports as fishing and golf for specialized magazines. O'Rourke's brief section on ``Current and Recurrent Events'' reminds us of his best political work; an even briefer selection of miscellany has some funnier stuff, including his uproarious dissection of a book tour. 150,000 first printing; author tour. (Sept.)