LIGHTEN UP, GEORGE

The copy on Buchwald's latest column collection describes him as ``a syndicated columnist, a lecturer, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a plaintiff.'' None of the 157 columns (1989-91) reprinted here goes into the popular pundit's celebrated court case against Eddie Murphy and the Coming to America profits, but Buchwald covers just about every other timely topic (most broached, as usual, in a short fantasy scenario)—from the hidden benefits of smoking (``Nonsmokers...live too long, and to this day they are a tremendous drain on the country's resources'') to Soviet food shortages (a scenario in which Gorbachev gives up USSR conventional forces in Europe in exchange for ten thousand Dairy Queens and ``every Dunkin' Donuts east of the Mississippi'') and the S&L scandal (which finds Buchwald using an oxygen mask to climb a mountain of junk bonds—but ``you can never say that you have reached the summit of an S&L debt, because tomorrow it's bound to be higher''). So: more bright whimsy, bound to please; and for those concerned about the ill-effects of Buchwald's barbs, please note his promise that ``if anyone objects to the material in this book, I will happily retract it.''