THE SECOND TIME AS FARCE. Christopher Buckley's Boomsday attempts the inversion of turning the authority-questioning Baby Boomers into a particularly obnoxious Establishment bent on protecting its state-protected privileges, otherwise known as Social Security and Medicare, which at the setting of the book have not been privatized, although payroll taxes have been raised on younger workers. Those Thirteeners and older Millennials are inspired by webloggers to trash golf courses and ultimately burn their Social Security cards. Not the greatest material for a Book Review N^o. 21, but entertaining enough to keep me occupied at the airport and heading east. (I probably spend inefficiently much time in airports, but I'd really rather clear security with plenty of time to read rather than fret about boarding in time.) Mr Buckley's presentation of the inner circles of the political class is not pretty: it is difficult to conceive of a more miserable and unsuitable bunch of people aspiring to national office. The business and academic managers who make cameo (sometimes more than cameo) appearances don't come off too well either. I'm not sure whether these individuals are representative of real people Mr Buckley has met, or if he's trying too hard to be cynical. One detail from the book suggests he's trying too hard for the farce. A wealthy entrepreneur (who spent his daughter's college fund to finance his business) later purchases a Twelve Meter yacht to sail in an America's Cup challenge, but first he participates in a transoceanic race, ramming and sinking a French yacht to add to the excitement. The scion of a sailing family surely is aware that the Twelves have not been used in America's Cup competition since 1987, and most are engineered for near-shore sailing, with fleets clustered where the really well-off cluster.