This article is missing information about O'Rourke's trips to the Poland, Philippines, El Salvador, Australia, Mexico, and Israel. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(April 2024)
Holidays in Hell is a non-fiction book by P.J. O'Rourke about his visits to areas of conflict during the 1980s as a foreign correspondent, as well as to some less high-profile locations.[1][2]
Lebanon is an endless series of faces, with gun barrels, poking through the car window... Some of these faces belong to the Lebanese Army, some to the Christian Phalange, some to angry Shiites or blustering Druse or grumpy Syrian draftees, or Scarsdale-looking Israeli reservists
— P.J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell
Korea, December 1987
After the June Struggle, during the chaos that accompanied the democratic elections that followed:
They don't like anyone who isn't Korean, and they don't like each other all that much either. They're hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, "the Irish of Asia"
It's not really rich versus poor. It's more like the Elks versus the Rotary Club. The dentists and bank tellers are mad at the meter maids and postal clerks.
Now, a lot of people tell me this gray and depressing atmosphere is a product of the civil war ... I have, however been in places where guerilla wars were being fought—El Salvador, the Philippines and Lebanon. Those places weren't like this, and East Berlin, Poland, and Russia were.
