National Lampoon: 1964 High School Yearbook: 39th Reunion Edition

By P.J. O'Rourke

Book Overview

National Lampoons High School Yearbook: First released in 1974 and a two-million-plus bestseller, National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook is the premier property of the most recognized brand in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590710576
• ISBN13: 9781590710579
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Rugged Land Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.1" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Great blast from the past!

Ah, the good old days when 'National Lampoon' magazine was funny. Plus, this yearbook was the origin of the Lampoon's classic movie "Animal House", with the first appearance of Larry 'Lance' Kroeger. Lots of fun!

One of the funniest things in the English language

Let's state it simply -- this is perhaps the funniest book ever published, even though the year 1964 is getting more distant all the time. Ingenious in its construction (a multi-level reconstruction of a typical high school yearbook), it is a hilarious, scathing, understanding, and even sort of poignant look at the kids of one year, one generation, in America long ago. Absolutely brilliant! (If you can find it, NatLamp also did an amazingly detailed town newspaper parody in the late 1970's that is also great.)

Comic Masterpiece

I don't know how many copies I've had of the NATIONAL LAMPOON 1964 YEARBOOK PARODY over the years but they all disappeared. Shared them with friends and--POOF--they were gone. I just could not keep them to myself.Thank God they've reprinted it! It's still one of the funniest books I've ever read. I'd read an Esquire article about the life and death of Doug Kenney in the early 1980's and it described how Kenney threw himself into the project (reading yearbook after yearbook and even wearing his high school letterman's jacket to the Lampoon offices every day). He went on to co-write ANIMAL HOUSE (he played "The Stork") and then co-wrote/produced CADDYSHACK before he died in a hiking accident in Hawaii. One weird detail: the picture of the kid who died (and no one seems to remember) is an actual school photo of Doug Kenney.P.J. O'Rourke and the others also deserve the highest praise for creating what will be an enduring classic of American humor. I'll treasure this along with my own yearbooks!

I laugh every time I pick it up

I graduated from high school in 1964 and was stuck working on our annual that year. The Lampoon's 1964 Annual could have used ours as its model. The principal's letter, the layout for the senior through frosh classes (with pictures in ever decreasing size), the corny captions, the dedication to JFK who was assassinated during that school year, the "in memorian" for the student who died that year - I helped put together the same things except we were taking ourselves seriously! I marvel at the amount of work that went into this masterpiece. Just coming up with the hundreds of gag names used for the underclass photos must have been a major undertaking. The portion of the American history book that is included is almost worth the purchase price alone. It's also a special treat that this copy happens to have belonged to graduating senior Larry Kroger (who later went on to fame in "Animal House") with appropriately irreverant doodles and notes from Larry and some of his classmates. I love this thing!!