None of My Business: P.J. Explains Money, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, Liabilities, and Why He’s Not Rich and Neither Are You

O’Rourke (What the Hell Just Happened?), a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, omits nothing in his manic commentary on the state of consumerism, economics, and technology amid the ongoing “digital revolution,” ornamented with wry anecdotes from his journalistic career and personal life. Remembering his time reporting on war-torn 1990s Somalia, he muses, “Maybe one way to understand currency collapse is to go someplace where society has collapsed already”; in an equally insightful, albeit dramatically different moment, he solicits opinions about popular apps from his teenage daughter, “a one-girl focus group sitting right across the breakfast table, so deeply involved in the digital economy that her hair was dragging in her nut butter and chia seed toast.” Himself unimpressed with most modern innovations, he pinpoints “unnovations,” including texting and PowerPoint, he would erase if he could. In a different vein, a recollection of cleaning out his rural New England home’s chicken coop leads to a reconsideration of the phrase, “I’d rather be shoveling shit in hell,” and a (measured) new appreciation for the value of manual labor. While choppy and unfocused at times, the book makes a good case for humor’s helpfulness in confronting the modern world’s ever-present absurdities. (Sept.)