Rating: 
Summary: Buy It for the Old Stuff, Not the New
Review: I have been waiting almost 30 years for them to reprint the yearbook. It's not subtle, but it's extremely funny for all ages. I don't think it's offensive at all. I have a copy from 1974 and have loved it for 30 years. My 21 year old son has read it since middle school and wanted his own copy. He's an editor of his college newpaper now and this book has been an inspiration. Now it's here!! Wonderful!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: It's finally back!
Review: I have been waiting almost 30 years for them to reprint the yearbook. It's not subtle, but it's extremely funny for all ages. I don't think it's offensive at all. I have a copy from 1974 and have loved it for 30 years. My 21 year old son has read it since middle school and wanted his own copy. He's an editor of his college newpaper now and this book has been an inspiration. Now it's here!! Wonderful!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: They Missed A Golden Opportunity
Review: I really wanted to love this book...I still have my original copy of the 1964 Yearbook, and as far as I'm concerned, it's still the definitive edition. With the announcement of this HARDCOVER edition, I was hoping the publisher would take the opportunity to make this parody look like a REAL yearbook. One of the things the NL was great at doing was an Exact Parody of the thing they were satirizing. In the original edition the paper utilized different stocks for different functions. Also, the book could be placed upside down and backwards on a surface and aside from the paperback binding, it looked like a vintage yearbook. This version is loud, garish, the buttcheecks have been covered up, and the logo is wrong...Perhaps I'm a purist, but the design of this book is just all wrong. It should have been released in a dust jacket that could be removed, with a real looking binding of a yearbook underneath. Also, the printing inside the book looks like it was printed from an old copy of the yearbook magazine, instead of the original stats or negatives...Yes, the comedy is still great, but the design is greatly flawed...I'd only recommend getting it if you have to have it...Otherwise, hold out for an original copy, it just feels better!
Rating:
Summary: They Missed A Golden Opportunity
Review: I really wanted to love this book...I still have my original copy of the 1964 Yearbook, and as far as I'm concerned, it's still the definitive edition. With the announcement of this HARDCOVER edition, I was hoping the publisher would take the opportunity to make this parody look like a REAL yearbook. One of the things the NL was great at doing was an Exact Parody of the thing they were satirizing. In the original edition the paper utilized different stocks for different functions. Also, the book could be placed upside down and backwards on a surface and aside from the paperback binding, it looked like a vintage yearbook. This version is loud, garish, the buttcheecks have been covered up, and the logo is wrong...Perhaps I'm a purist, but the design of this book is just all wrong. It should have been released in a dust jacket that could be removed, with a real looking binding of a yearbook underneath. Also, the printing inside the book looks like it was printed from an old copy of the yearbook magazine, instead of the original stats or negatives...Yes, the comedy is still great, but the design is greatly flawed...I'd only recommend getting it if you have to have it...Otherwise, hold out for an original copy, it just feels better!
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious...and disgusting
Review: It gave me a chuckle to revisit this book.
However, it is racist, sexist, and anti-Catholic: Maria Theresa Spermatazoa may amuse but also represents Catholics as inferior bodies to be controlled by Protestant minds.
Essentially, P. J. O'Rourke's entire career has been devoted to affirming the reality of a class structure which victimized him growing up in Ohio, and demonstrating that in America, there is no escape from the juvenile categories of high-school which enforce, in communities like Dacron, Ohio, the interests of the local "elite."
Because of a defect in our Constitution, local "elites" in the real-life counterparts of towns like Dacron are over-represented in DC and their interests, chiefly the definition of success and worth with property owning, as a result control the political process.
This process had disastrous results in the 1960s as these elites led the football teams into Vietnam, and they've repeated the same mistake in Iraq.
But in both cases, "humor" is used to Manufacture Consent to shattered lives.
I was in other words amused to read of Gilbert "Univac" Scrabbler's career: the local Dacron nerd is now, in this book, living with Mom and Dad.
Well, PJ, my Mom is dead and I took care of my Dad, and yes indeed, the dot.com industry has busted. But basically, the ruination of lives in a country where unprecedented numbers of Americans are in poverty, thanks in small measure to the continual reassertion of racist, sexist, and classist categories in the guise of humor, eventually ceases to amuse.
The message of the humor is that "you are powerless, and your efforts to assert power are without meaning." Fortunately, a critical mass of nerds, women, and other outliers have ignored this message.
UPDATE 11-19-2004
Thanks for all the accolades...intended and ironic. I even got in the Wall Street Journal, as a Complete Dork, for daring to point out that the target of the humor is the typical target of the typical bully: the "mark" who can't hit back.
Everybody who's objected to my comments has said that "awwww Ed, it's just HUMOR".
This is true. However, The National Lampoon from day one of its creation, like Saturday Night Live, evaded criticism of a white male establishment and targeted The Rest of Us.
In the NatLamp's case, and in the related case of SNL (which was under even more pressure from network execs) this has consistently involved mockery of egalitarian instincts, including (in NatLamp's case) several send-ups of "third-rate" universities...for people who have the bad taste not to be born, like our President, to a rich Mommy and Daddy.
When we were kids, way the hell back in the 1950s, we mocked kids who acted rich or were bad at sports, but a young feller in the digital cafe has informed me that when he attended New Trier High School in the 1990s, the pecking order was aligned, strictly, according to parental income.
These attitudes manufactured the election of George Bush, and I really don't care who anyone voted for.
Sure, in an ironic world, everybody "hates" the class president...and desparately wants to be him lest their aspirations be narrated as those of a sex object like Mary Catherine, or a dork.
My first sentence in the original review was on the level. I found the NatLamp and SNL funny especially when I was drunk-or-stoned.
At the same time, NatLamp and SNL, whether they intend to or not, Manufacture Consent to class war.
As a result of their generalized caricature of "third rate" universities, which discounts the hard work students perform to get there, Roosevelt University in Chicago was held up to ridicule in the Wall Street Journal in 1987 as a diploma mill. This was a university known as "the poor man's University of Chicago" which has consistently maintained high academic standards...certainly higher than the rather special set of standards imposed on George Bush.
Finally, it is no accident, I think, that service on NatLamp or SNL is hazardous to one's health. John Belushi, John Candy, Danitravance, Phil Hartmann, Chris Farley were all victims, like Curley Howard, of an industrialized laff factory in which their talents were disregarded in favor of cheap and in Danitravance's case racist laffs, as were two editors of NatLamp.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious...and disgusting
Review: It gave me a chuckle to revisit this book.However, it is racist, sexist, and anti-Catholic: Maria Theresa Spermatazoa may amuse but also represents Catholics as inferior bodies to be controlled by Protestant minds. Essentially, P. J. O'Rourke's entire career has been devoted to affirming the reality of a class structure which victimized him growing up in Ohio, and demonstrating that in America, there is no escape from the juvenile categories of high-school which enforce, in communities like Dacron, Ohio, the interests of the local "elite." Because of a defect in our Constitution, local "elites" in the real-life counterparts of towns like Dacron are over-represented in DC and their interests, chiefly the definition of success and worth with property owning, as a result control the political process. This process had disastrous results in the 1960s as these elites led the football teams into Vietnam, and they've repeated the same mistake in Iraq. But in both cases, "humor" is used to Manufacture Consent to shattered lives. I was in other words amused to read of Gilbert "Univac" Scrabbler's career: the local Dacron nerd is now, in this book, living with Mom and Dad. Well, PJ, my Mom is dead and I took care of my Dad, and yes indeed, the dot.com industry has busted. But basically, the ruination of lives in a country where unprecedented numbers of Americans are in poverty, thanks in small measure to the continual reassertion of racist, sexist, and classist categories in the guise of humor, eventually ceases to amuse. The message of the humor is that "you are powerless, and your efforts to assert power are without meaning." Fortunately, a critical mass of nerds, women, and other outliers have ignored this message.
Rating:
Summary: One of the funniest things in the English language
Review: Let's state it simply -- this is perhaps the funniest book ever published, even though the year 1964 is getting more distant all the time. Ingenious in its construction (a multi-level reconstruction of a typical high school yearbook), it is a hilarious, scathing, understanding, and even sort of poignant look at the kids of one year, one generation, in America long ago. Absolutely brilliant! (If you can find it, NatLamp also did an amazingly detailed town newspaper parody in the late 1970's that is also great.)
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and detailed satire
Review: Oh WOW, it's back! I purchased the original edition of this classic ages ago. This hilarious, elaborate, and merciless satire creates a complete little world: Dacron (motor home capitol of the world), Ohio's High School, circa 1964. It captures the slightly clunky look-and-feel of school yearbooks, and includes lots of great B&W photos of the classes, clubs, sport teams, and events. Like Matt Groening's _School is Hell_, it is humor with a healthy measure of grim insight and honesty. Fans of "National Lampoon's Animal House" may find some of the student's names familiar. As a bonus, the last few pages contain ephemera: little forms from the owner's "permanent record," pages from a mediocre history book, Dacron High's poetry journal, the school newspaper, and so on. There are some new additions in this special edition, but they're kind of perfunctory: A mock-cutesy "What Happened To?" newsletter, and an introduction that breaks the versimilitude of the piece. Perhaps there's hope that National Lampoon's equally brilliant, even more elaborate Sunday Newspaper spoof (The Dacron Republican/Democrat) -- which has references to the yearbook -- will be released.
Rating:
Summary: A long-overdue reprint
Review: This parody was a masterpiece in its own time. So many people have had more than one copy of it, because we passed it around, gave it away and then replaced it, and shared it with as many people as we could. Everything just seemed so perfect, right down to the tiniest details like the hundreds of (clever) names under the photos of the 10th and 11th grade students. Admittedly, the additional material in this edition is fairly predictable, although a few of the scenarios (such as "F. George Furter" being set up to take the corporate fall for the Van Husens) are both inventive and plausible. And yes, the overall quality of the reproduced photographs is somewhat disappointing. But for those of us who have been looking for a copy of this without any success for quite a while, this "39th reunion" edition is a "must-have." And for anyone else who was a teenager in the '60s, '70s, or '80s and who does not own a copy of the original edition or who (worse!) has never even seen or heard of it, this is also a "must-have." Please disregard some of the comments made in other reviews (below) ----- about P.J. O'Rourke's politics, about a gay priest, about stereotyping a female Catholic high school senior, etc. ----- there is NO POLITICS in this, just funny and creative stuff. (A few people have made it their life's work to be offended by every little thing, and never miss a chance to complain and attack; perhaps they believe it demonstrates their exquisite sensitivity and superior powers of critical analysis.) If you liked Animal House or any of National Lampoon's early issues, just trust me and order your own copy of this yearbook. And this time ... don't lose it!
Rating:
Summary: A long-overdue reprint
Review: This parody was a masterpiece in its own time. So many people have had more than one copy of it, because we passed it around, gave it away and then replaced it, and shared it with as many people as we could. Everything just seemed so perfect, right down to the tiniest details like the hundreds of (clever) names under the photos of the 10th and 11th grade students. Admittedly, the additional material in this edition is fairly predictable, although a few of the scenarios (such as "F. George Furter" being set up to take the corporate fall for the Van Husens) are both inventive and plausible. And yes, the overall quality of the reproduced photographs is somewhat disappointing. But for those of us who have been looking for a copy of this without any success for quite a while, this "39th reunion" edition is a "must-have." And for anyone else who was a teenager in the '60s, '70s, or '80s and who does not own a copy of the original edition or who (worse!) has never even seen or heard of it, this is also a "must-have." Please disregard some of the comments made in other reviews (below) ----- about P.J. O'Rourke's politics, about a gay priest, about stereotyping a female Catholic high school senior, etc. ----- there is NO POLITICS in this, just funny and creative stuff. (A few people have made it their life's work to be offended by every little thing, and never miss a chance to complain and attack; perhaps they believe it demonstrates their exquisite sensitivity and superior powers of critical analysis.) If you liked Animal House or any of National Lampoon's early issues, just trust me and order your own copy of this yearbook. And this time ... don't lose it!
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