Boomsday

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		Boomsday
		Boomsday

基本信息·出版社：Twelve
·页码：336 页
·出版日期：2007年04月
·ISBN：0446579815
·International Standard Book Number：0446579815
·条形码：9780446579810
·EAN：9780446579810
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语

内容简介 在线阅读本书

Outraged over the mounting Social Security debt, Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of citizens, chief among them "an ambitious senator seeking the presidency." With the help of Washington's greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (called "transitioning") all the way to the White House,
over the objections of the Religious Right, and of course, the Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement
resorts.
作者简介 Christopher Buckley, "the quintessential political novelist of his time" according to Fortune magazine, is the winner of the distinguished ninth annual Thurber Prize for American Humor, Tom Wolfe has described him as "one of the funniest writers in the English language."
Buckley is the author of eleven books, many of them national bestsellers, including Thank You For Smoking, God Is My Broker, No Way To Treat A First Lady, and Florence of Arabia. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages, including Russian and Korean.

媒体推荐 "...a scrumptiously shrewd and hilarious political satire that takes bold measure of the newly widening generation gap and politics even worse than usual." -- ―?Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"A lethally sharp satire . . . The more you ponder the novel's outrageous premise, the more seriously you might take it." -- ―Don McLeese, Kirkus Reviews, Spring/Summer Preview, 2007

"An accomplished comic novelist and raucously funny political satirist." -- --Sunday Times of London

"Christopher Buckley has come up with the season's best subject for a novel: euthanasia." -- ―Adam Begley, New York Observer

"One of the funnist writers in the English language." -- --Tom Wolfe

"One of the rarest specimens -- the authentically comic writer." -- --Boston Globe

"The humor is wicked and the satire incisive." -- ―Sandra Kent, Boston Herald

"The quintessential political novelist of our time." -- --Fortune magazine

"Washington is a serious place. That is, it used to be, until the novels of Christopher Buckley came along." -- ―Jeremy Grant, Financial Times

Exquisitely dizzy, Wodehouse-style mischief...one of Mr. Buckley's fizziest satires..." -- --Janet Maslin, The New York Times
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

[Signature] Reviewed by Jessica CutlerIt's the end of the world as we know it, especially if bloggers are setting the national agenda. In his latest novel, Buckley imagines a not-so-distant future when America teeters on the brink of economic disaster as the baby boomers start retiring. Buckley takes on such pressing (however boring) topics as Social Security reform and fiscal solvency, as does his protagonist. And get this: she's a blogger.Buckley's heroine is "a morally superior twenty-nine-year-old PR chick" who blogs at night about the impending Boomsday budget crisis. Of course, "she was young, she was pretty, she was blonde, she had something to say." She has a large, doting audience that eagerly awaits her every blog entry. And her name? Cassandra. And the name of her blog? Also Cassandra. Of course, Buckley doesn't let his allusion get by us:"She was a goddess of something," another character struggles to remember, which gives his heroine the opportunity to educate us about the significance of her namesake."Daughter of the king of Troy. She warned that the city would fall to the Greeks," she explains. "Cassandra is sort of a metaphor for catastrophe prediction. This is me. It's what I do." So Cassandra, doing what she does, starts by calling for "an economic Bastille Day" and her minions take to destroying golf courses in protest. Cassandra grabs headlines and magazine covers, and the president starts wringing his hands over what she might blog about next. Her follow-up: a radical but tantalizingly expedient solution to that most vexing of issues, the Social Security problem—Cassandra proposes that senior citizens kill themselves in exchange for tax breaks. Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking, shows great imagination as he fires his pistol at the feet of his straw women and men. In 300-plus pages, though, it would be nice if he had found a way to endear us to at least one of his characters. Yes, we know that Washington is "an asshole-rich environment," as one puts it, but some Tom Wolfe–style self-loathing might be good for characters who use the word touché. Full disclosure: I'm a blogger of Cassandra's generation, and at times the totally over-the-top, relentlessly us-against-them scenario reminded me that I was reading a book written by someone not of the blogging generation, someone who Cassandra would want put down. Oh, the irony in these generationalist feelings. Then again, maybe that's exactly Buckley's point.Jessica Cutler is the author of The Washingtonienne.
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