Jonathan Last

In Search of a Punchline
November 16th, 2004

The AP reports on beavers who found some stolen cash and wove it into their dam.

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"We should have called it The Virtue Rises. Humbug." — JVL

In the midst of PC police, low-budget holiday movies, and mandatory in-law time, the only Christmas spirit on most people's minds these days is the kind that comes in a flask.

"It's long and it doesn't have Spider-Man in it anywhere." — Cody Last

From the all-star cast who brought you The Seven Deadly Virtues comes a book with a look at the good life… or the crazy-stressful-overwhelmed life… of a father. As anyone who has spent time with a child knows, fatherhood is a mixed bag of fun, fury, and failure. So much is lost—no more catnaps during football commercials, no more exotic vacations or impromptu day trips. And yet, as authors like P. J.…

"The best argument for chastity since Bea Arthur." — Andrew Ferguson

An all-star team of eighteen conservative writers offers a hilarious, insightful, sanctimony-free remix of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues—without parental controls. The Seven Deadly Virtues sits down next to readers at the bar, buys them a drink, and an hour or three later, ushers them into the revival tent without them even realizing it. The book’s contributors include Sonny Bunch, Christopher Buckley, David “Iowahawk” Burge, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael…

""A powerful argument that the only thing worse than having children is not having them."" — P. J. O'Rourke

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else. It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population…

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