Review: Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This"

Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" by P.J. O'Rourke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I would have rated this 4 stars when I first read it a couple of decades ago... It is still hilarious, but vigorous satire and above-it-all laughing at misery makes me feel a tad uncomfortable when it didn't bother me, then. That being said, I was reminded of this tome when I saw it on "15 funniest travel books ever written" on CNN.com. Now what strikes me is how sad so much of the problem spots are still problem spots without resolution: illegal immigrants from Central America, infighting in the Levant and parts north, ... even the promise of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit didn't pan out in these Putin times...

..Also, I think this the type of travel writing, Henry David Thoreau warned of: "It's not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar" and from Walden, "I read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself..."

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