Balsamic Dreams: A Short But Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation (2012)

Baby boomers have been called smug, self-indulgent, prone to sarcasm, and clever but shallow -- and Queenan is their unintentional mascot. In this cut-rate collection of essays, Queenan rants about boomer fashion, music, and cultural pretensions. But the book's scant political or historical analysis reduces it to a collection of snide asides, making Queenan part of the problem, not the solution. Though he fires off some withering one-liners, Queenan labors with longer gags (including lists of boomer transgressions from ''Art Garfunkelian hair'' to ''rehearsed political hysteria'') and his facts are flimsy (in lambasting five famous boomer artists, he misspells three of their names). As for the gag title and cover (Queenan on a bottle of balsamic vinegar), not even a boomer would find it funny.