I’m doing a feature called Peeling The Onion where every Tuesday this month at noon EST I publish an article about a different Onion book, specifically the three original books by The Onion(Our Dumb Century, Our Dumb World, and Book of Known Knowledge), plus The A.V. Club’s semi-original book Inventory.

I decided now would be a good time to do it because we just passed the quarter mark of the 21st century so it’d be an opportune time to look back at Our Dumb Century, although I admit I was a bit puzzled by the fact that the book was released in 1999 instead of waiting a year in case anything big happened.

Anyway, I think people here would agree it’s a funny book. I think, though, that the best thing about it is arguably not the humor but the amount of detail they put into getting the look and feel of each era right, from the graphics to the language(“Fisticuffsmanship!”) to the attitudes(“African Savages Taught Ways of Christ by Kindly British”). That appeals a lot to me as a fan of parody and imitation.

It also has a lot of fun with how we view those past eras in retrospect. Example: the page before the JFK assassination has “Celebrating Our National Innocence” in the corner, the one that covers the assassination has “Take a Moment to Remember Where You Are”, and the one after has “Weather: Some serious change in the air, man.”

The book also has a lot of range in that it covers the obvious stuff((“Holy Shit, Man Walks on Fucking Moon”) to the very specific(“Harlan Ellison: ‘Not Everything Coming Out of the Lab Is Good and Beautiful and Why Can’t Someone Do a Good Radio Show Like The Mysterious Traveler You Bastards'”).

Some of the jokes had aged oddly, though. “Donald Trump Announced Plans to Gold-Plate Atlantic City” seems odd to me now that it’s been a long time since people have thought of him as a gold-obsessed rich guy from the ’80s, and “Bill Cosby Demands More Interesting Sweaters” doesn’t reflect how people think about him anymore either. However, “Educators Praised As U.S. Kids Lead World In Schoolyard Shooting Accuracy” was remarkably prescient considering the book came out before Columbine, and “Drugs Win Drug War” appears to be coming true.

Final thing: in the original paperback edition the book’s cover has three fake covers from inside the book: the one about the sinking of the Titanic, the one about JFK’s assassination, and the one about Clinton’s inauguration(“New President Feels Nation’s Pain, Breasts”. The Clinton one is on page 154, and on the left side of the page there’s a thing about the lotto with the line “Losing lotto tickets can now be redeemed for 25 cents off any 10-gram vial of crack.” However, on the one on the book’s cover it says(assuming I’m reading the tiny print correctly): “Please continue to gamble on the lotto. But please do not gamble with our children’s future. Recycle your lotto ticket.”