and while recommending: go get Robert Fitterman's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. he attempts an updating or translation of Gibbons' little tome. the humour is dry and subtly relentless. Fitterman lets things extend so that one passes thru and beyond the simple stingings of irony, sarcasm and satire. those are present, as natural human reactions, but not weighted for glory. which is to say, a humanism wins thru. anyone who hates flarf or google-searches are just saying they aint got any effort in them. a teacher I had says "depth is on the surface". I think it is a vital work to sound the depth of our public surface.