Product Description

“The Onion is laugh-out-loud, go-tell-your-friends, get-angry-you-didn’t-think-of-it funny.”
–Conan O’Brien

“Outside of maybe Dario Fo, an Italian who few are sure exists, the Onion people make the most consistently perfect and excoriating social commentary we currently have. But will those Nobel bastards honor them, too? Only God, our merciless and just God, knows.”
–Dave Eggers

“The funniest publication in the United States.”
–The New Yorker

“This publication is tasteless and destructive to our shared values. Read it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean. Seriously, what else could make me laugh–much less laugh uproariously–while being offended week after week after week?”
–Al Gore

“The Onion is the funniest thing in news since Dan Rather’s spooky stare.”
–Matt Groening

“Brutal satire that rushes into the far reaches of race, class, sexuality, and culture where many publications–and critics–fear to tread.”
–Chicago Tribune

“The Onion, unlike any other entity in our media culture, offers a refreshingly honest look at our complicated life.”
–Ken Burns

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #290928 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-04
• Released on: 2001-09-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Amazon.com Review
Dave Eggers, Matt Groening, Ken Burns, and Conan O'Brien agree: The Onion, that scrappy mag ruthlessly satirizing madcap modern life and earnest newspaper journalism, is funnier than reality. Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion carries on the proud, shameless tradition of Our Dumb Century, which won the 1999 Thurber Prize for American Humor. If a real, dumb newspaper wrote a feature story about hell, you bet its headline would be the boosterish one imagined by the maniacs at the Onion: "Tenth Circle Added to Rapidly Growing Hell." When one reads in this book the headline "Arabs, Israelis Sign 'Screw Peace' Accord," one wonders whether The Onion has not, alas, anticipated the news. Their style of yuks is not for softies: the headline "Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle with Cancer" may not strike the funny bone of the recently bereaved, but it's a dead-on parody of the sort of sentimental slop that cops major journalism awards in our dumb news era. If you can laugh at the preposterous world around you, and muster the courage to tear down without building up, this book is for you.

From Publishers Weekly
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 commentary 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. (Sept. 4)Forecast: National marketing includes 16-copy floor displays and ads in alternative weeklies and college newspapers, plus a 20-city morning radio campaign. Since the Onion paid PW the highest compliment by parodying Show Daily at BEA, we must return the favor and admit that these nutballs probably have another bestseller on their hands.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
T. Herman Zweibel and the Onion staff are in fine form as always in the latest compilation of satire and mock journalism from "America's Finest News Source." With a collection of articles, infographics, and opinion polls, the Onion takes on a variety of subjects, targeting actual events or people and offering wry observations on politics, religion, commerce, and popular culture. Poking fun at shock music, the reactions to school shootings, religious terrorism, and many other items that populate the news, the writers highlight that which is ridiculous and inane in today's issues and social trends. Pointing out the quirks of society that most of us don't notice anymore, some Onion pieces make a statement and give new perspective to the world around us, whereas others are simply offensive for pure shock value. Most of the articles in this compilation are from relatively recent issues of the Onion, though some date back more than a few years. Contains some of the Onion's best pieces. Gavin Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Truly an amazing, laugh-out-loud funny spoof.
This book is a collection of spoof, "Harvard Lampon" style, irreverent "newspaper articles", poking fun at some standards of the newspaper trade. So we have such standbys as the opinion piece rhapsodizing about how much better ballplayers were in the old days ("In My Day, Ballplayers Were For ****") (except that they don't bother to bowdlerize it; if I quote it accurately, Amazon blocks my review), the point-counterpoint ("Nigeria May Be A Developing Nation, But It Is Rich In Tradition") ("Get Me Out Of This Godforsaken Hellhole"), the local point of interest ("Desperate Small Town Erects World's Largest Fiberglass Chili Dog"), religious news ("Pope Calls For Greater Understanding Between Catholics, Hellbound") and many others. What is particularly amazing about this is that not only do they fill an entire book with such spot-on parodies of headlines, but in most cases, they actually write the article that goes with the headlines, and remain just as spot-on in their parodies. (In a few cases, all we see is headlines with fake "see story on page xx" tags.) The one way in which their parodies are NOT perfect is that they are actually BETTER written and edited than real newspaper stories; I found NO typos in the entire book. So not only are the hilariously funny, they're also COMPETENT.

Hilarious II
All of the Onion publications are great - just looking at the cover is funny enough, never mind reading the articles.

The onion provides the finest satire in the 21st century
Through blunt and undiscriminating and politically incorrect straightfaced satire, this collection made me laugh loud and often.