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Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion
Dispatches from the Tenth Circle The Best of the Onion Author:Onion Staff, Robert Siegel, Todd Hanson Siegel, who began writing for the Onion in 1995 at age 23, became the satirical publication's editor by 1996, grabbing readers with such headlines as "Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs," "Lutheran Minister Loves to Fuck His Wife" and "C-SPAN Releases Too Hot for C-SPAN! Video." With a surfeit of social/cultural c... more »ommentary subtexts, some savage, the Onion has more layers than one might think. This collection offers thoroughly entertaining stuff like "Nation's Last Themeless Restaurant Closes" and "New Study Too Frightening to Release." Launched in 1988 as a free weekly for University of Wisconsin dorms, the nutty newspaper now has a circulation of 300,000, proclaiming itself "America's finest news source" and "the world's most popular humor periodical." Perhaps they get away with this because their first book, Our Dumb Century, winner of the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor, was a New York Times bestseller. To ignite future projects, the editorial staff left Wisconsin last January to open a New York office, but they didn't lose their sense of humor in the transition, as evidenced by the hilarity here, such as "Fanzine Marred by Typo" and "New Starbucks Opens in Rest Room of Existing Starbucks." Some pieces are short ("Ritalin Cures Next Picasso"), some long, and this collection, with more than 500 b&w photos, illustrations, charts and maps, garners genuine guffaws. No matter how you slice it, the Onion has appeal« less