Dave Barry Turns 50

"Many bad things happen when you turn 50. You can't see; you can't hear; you can read the entire Oxford English Dictionary in the time it takes you to go to the bathroom; and you keep meeting people your own age who look like Grandpa Walton (and those are the women)." Yep, Dave Barry is getting old, and the King of Humor may soon become the King Lear of Humor, but fear not, because Dave is not going quietly. Dave Barry Turns 50 is Barry at his best, mainly because it succeeds in being more than simply a collection of his newspaper columns. He examines the development of the baby boomer, from youth in the '50s ("an age so innocent that there could be a TV show featuring a main character called 'The Beaver'") to maturity in the '70s ("We ... basked in the reflected glory of Woodward and Bernstein: we were inspired by them; we kept a sharp eye out for any hint of corruption in the way our local school board purchased clarinets for the marching band"), before providing a self-help guide for those entering their second half century.

Barry could squeeze laughs out of a prostate exam (eventually he may have to, although the cover of this book proudly states that he refuses to even mention the word prostate), and Dave Barry Turns 50 provides him with ample opportunities to demonstrate the agile wit that has endeared him to millions of fans. Even in the final chapters, when he faces the inevitability of death, he manages to keep chuckling--after all, he is only 50, and this, he points out, "...is our glory time, this last decade or so before our powers decline and we start showing up for work with our pants on backwards." Let's hope that we'll be around for Dave Barry Turns 90. --Simon Leake