Lately it's become fashionable to vilify Baby Boomers as "the worst generation": the most selfish, the most avaricious, the most hypocritical — and the most obsessed with the provenance of their neighbors' porcini mushrooms. But is this characterization fair?

Professional iconoclast and Baby Boomer Joe Queenan decided to find out, and the results are not pretty. How did a generation that started out at Woodstock and Monterey end up at Crate & Barrel? How did a generation that promised to "teach its children well" end up with progeny so evil they could give the kid from The Omen a run for his money? How could one single generation eat that much squid-ink vermicelli?

In Balsamic Dreams, Joe Queenan explains, more in sorrow than in anger, precisely how a generation with so much promise lost its way. A hilarious work of incisive social commentary, it offers a measured, if cranky, assessment of a generation whose greatest sin lies in confusing pop culture with culture and mistaking lifestyle for life.

"When Joe Queenan is good, he's very, very good. But when he's bad, he's a whole lot better." John Anderson, New York Newsday

"Half-Calvinist, half-nihilist...[he's] outrageously funny." James Ellroy, author of L.A. Confidential

"I've laughed till it hurt reading Joe Queenan." Michael Lewis, author of The New New Thing

"Queenan cuts into his targets with all the verbal agility of a literary samurai." Craig Lindsey, Houston Chronicle

"When a book's index features entries like 'Ringwald, Molly — America's refusal to deal with sinister legacy of,' you know you're dealing with a brilliantly sick mind." Andrew Johnston, Time Out

"Somewhere, Mencken is beaming." Bruce McCall, The New York Times Book Review

A measured assessment of a generation whose greatest sin lies in confusing lifestyle for life and pop culture for culture, "Balsamic Dreams" is fresh, funny, and irresistible commentary by the author of the bestselling "Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon".

The author of the bestselling Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon takes aim at the boomer generation in a hilarious work of social commentary.

It's become fashionable to vilify baby boomers. Professional iconoclast and baby boomer Joe Queenan, however, takes a somewhat more benign position: Yes, the baby boomers are venal, self-obsessed egomaniacs blighted by an insalubrious interest in things like the provenance of their neighbors' balsamic vinegar. But this does not make them the "worst generation" — it just makes them the most annoying.

In Balsamic Dreams, Queenan chronicles the evolution of his generation and critiques its current condition in chapters such as:

--J'Accuse: a bold indictment of the boomers' greatest transgressions, past and present

--Ten Days That Rocked the World: in which Queenan identifies the precise moments things went awry (#1: the release of Carole King's Tapestry)

--Careful, the Staff Might Hear You: an examination of the unspoken, nefarious alliance between baby boomers and Generation X

--American History: The B-Sides: an alternative version of the Republic as played out with baby boomers in the starring roles

A measured (if a tad cranky) assessment of a generation whose greatest sin lies in confusing lifestyle for life and pop culture for culture, Balsamic Dreams is fresh, funny, and irresistible.

The author of six previous books, including Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon, JOE QUEENAN is a contributing editor at GQ and writes a column, "Good Fences," for The New York Times. He lives in Tarrytown, New York.