The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race

Satirist Paul Krassner has collected a number of his outrageous pieces in this exuberantly in- your-face collection. The longtime editor of The Realist, Krassner may be a self-proclaimed "psychedelic relic," but Kurt Vonnegut Jr., in the introduction to this collection, asserts that Krassner's writings are "emphatically not nostalgic, but raffishly responsive to the here and now." Puncturing pomposity wherever he finds it, Krassner joyously skewers those on the left as well as those on the right, and while his prose is often indelicate, it's also often hilarious. As Vonnegut notes, Krassner can make very serious matters seem ridiculous, and then his readers can decide for themselves what is serious and what isn't.