See You On The Radio

A collection of the radio and television pundit's best work, from the past eight years. Charles Osgood, like Art Buchwald of Erma Bombeck, possesses the sort of wry wit that seems quintessentially American, the ability to gently mock this country and its citizens with plain old common sense. Most of the pieces in the book, which are taken from Osgood's CBS radio broadcasts, concern people and the very strange things they do or say, and the book is divided into suitable sections, such as ""HPF (The Human Perversity Factor),"" which includes an essay on a convention held by and for lightning strike victims, or ""Money Draws Flies,"" in which Osgood discourses on, among other topics, the hazards of winning the lottery. The author runs the gamut of topics from political correcmess to patriotism, and while reading too many in one sitting is somewhat cloying, there's something to chuckle at in almost every piece. Osgood is particularly good at pointing up the foibles of both people and institutions, and finds particular pleasure in taking inflated government agencies or their minions to task, as, for instance, in a piece on the modernization of the IRS. ""Yesterday the IRS brass appeared before a House appropriations subcommittee. This is the subcommittee that oversees the people who ate overseeing the people who ate modernizing the modernization program."" Several of the essays are accompanied by doggerel that ranges from groaningly bad to delightful (such as when he includes the name of the drug sysnyntenoctadecanoamide in verse). This is the sort of collection that Osgood's fans will adore--and it may even win him some new ones.