Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, bestselling author, and Wheel of Fortune contestant Dave Barry exposes the shattering truth. Whether he's splashing with the U.S. sychronized swim team ("Picture a bunch of elegant swans swimming with a flailing sea cow") or reliving the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving ("We've decided to obliterate your culture, but first may we try the stuffing?"), Dave Barry proves that one man can make a difference--by having the guts to answer the questions few people bother to ask: What makes people want to eat animals they would never consider petting? Where do the World's Three Most Boring People meet? Why is Colorado freezing so many human gonads? And just how does Oprah have the power to turn a 1957 Hotpoint toaster manual into a #1 bestseller?

Dave Barry was born in Armonk, New York, in 1947 and has been steadily growing older ever since, without ever actually reaching maturity.  He attended public schools, where he distinguished himself by not getting in nearly as much trouble as he would have if authorities had been aware of everything.  He is proud to have been elected Class Clown by the Pleasantville High School in 1965.<br>        <br>Barry went to Haverford College, where he was an English major and wrote lengthy scholarly papers filled with sentences that even he did not understand.  He graduated in 1969 and eventually got a job with a newspaper named, this is the real name, the Daily Local News, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he covered a series of incredibly dull municipal meetings, some of which are still going on.<br>        <br>In 1975, Barry joined Burger Associates, a consulting firm that teaches effective writing to business persons.  He spent nearly eight years trying to get various businesspersons to for-God's-sake-stop-writing-things like "Enclosed please find the enclosed enclosure," but he eventually realized that it was hopeless. So, in 1983 he took a job at the Miami Herald, and he has been there ever since, although he never answers the phone.  In 1988, he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, pending a recount.  His column appears in several hundred newspapers, yet another indication of the worsening drug crisis.<br>        <br>Barry is the author of numerous best-sellers, including the recent Dave Barry in Cyberspace (Crown 1996).  He lives in Miami, Florida.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>