22 of Your Picks for the Best Political Satire
This giveaway is sponsored by Chuck Palahniuk’s Adjustment Day, on sale now from W. W. Norton.
People pass the word only to those they trust most: Adjustment Day is coming. They’ve been reading a mysterious book and memorizing its directives. They are ready for the reckoning.
In his first novel in four years, Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Smug, geriatric politicians bring the nation to the brink of a third world war; working-class men dream of burying the elites. When Adjustment Day arrives, it fearlessly makes real the logical conclusion of every separatist fantasy, alternative fact, and conspiracy theory lurking in the American psyche.
Satire is vital. The technique shocks us into recognizing the absurdity of the damaging norms we’ve become used to. It makes us laugh, but it should also make us change. So we asked you to tell us what some of your favorite political satires are. Here’s a smattering of what you shared:
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government by P. J. O’Rourke
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction by “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The People’s Manifesto by Mark Thomas
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America’s Finest News Source by “The Onion”
The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
The Birds by Aristophanes
Boomsday by Christopher Buckley
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
MacBird! By Barbara Garson
I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert
In the Red by Mark Tavener
The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh
