Travel Lightly

Tired of mining mirth as a Hollywood screenwriter and a founding editor of National Lampoon, P. J. O'Rourke decided a few years back to laugh at mines—and roadblocks and riots and gun-toting terrorists. The result, out this month, is Holidays in Hell (Atlantic Monthly Press), a hair-raisingly hilarious update of Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad tour. O'Rourke moves blithely from one Third World war zone to another, cloaking scabrous wit in solemn travelese ("Beirut, at a glance, lacks charm"). He finds justice nowhere, wields malice toward all (Korean student demonstrators are grousing ding-dongs, General Noriega a pock-faced Pineapple Head), and returns a more conservative reporter than he set out, newly appreciative of old-fashioned American democracy. In a sense, his journey is a generation's; his humor is uniquely his own.

MICHAEL SHNAYERSON