P J O'Rourke

Recent Speaker

Author and Journalist

April 22, 2009

Broadcast live on ABC1 at 12.30pm. Repeat at 3.25am.

Broadcast live on ABC1 at 12.30pm. Repeat at 3.25am. 

P.J. O'Rourke is America's leading political satirist and the best-selling author of twelve books. After graduating from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and attending the graduate program at Johns Hopkins, O'Rourke began his career of skewering both the left and the right on the ends of his razor-sharp one-liners. Among the many publications for which O'Rourke has written are The National Lampoon (which he first joined in 1973, becoming editor-in-chief in 1978), Automobile, American Spectator, Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Harper's. He was also the Foreign Affairs Desk Chief for Rolling Stone, a position which allowed him to expose the hypocrisies of world politics from the Persian Gulf to the Philippines.  Currently he is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow of the Cato Institute and a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.

O'Rourke's books have been translated into a dozen languages and have been best sellers worldwide.  Three have been New York Times bestsellers: Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance, both of which went to #1, and All the Trouble in the World. O'Rourke divides his time between New Hampshire and Washington, DC.