Moans and groans of two ageing Baby Boomers

Selfish whining monkeys: how we ended up greedy, narcissistic and unhappy by Rod Liddle (4th Estate, £14.99)

The baby boom: how it got that way and it wasn't my fault and I'll never do it again by P J O'Rourke (Grove Press, £12.99)

Most readers will probably know in advance if they are going to enjoy or be offended by Rod Liddle's new book. Liddle is, by some margin, Britain's most prolific pundit, giving us the benefit of his opinions each week in The Sunday Times (twice), The Sun, The Spectator and sometimes also GQ and Country Life. His loyal readers will love it, while people who regard him as racist and misogynist, and are not convinced that his puerile rudeness is merely a wind-up aimed at what he calls "faux-Left social liberals", won't.

He once explained that he was parodying "guttural, base sexism" when he began a piece for The Spectator with the question: "So — Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober."

There's plenty of crocodile poking here. On the first page we get the first mention of "wogs" and by page two we learn that his parents didn't hold much truck with "krauts and Jews" either. He's still going strong at the end, wondering how his late father would have taken to the internet: "Would my dad have been up in the small hours of the morning, wanking away to the inexpert film of some rather hard-faced post-Soviet babe being fucked in a field by an Alsatian?" Liddle says he hopes not but would prefer that to imagining his late mother posting inanities on Mumsnet.

Actually, a lot of the nicest bits are about his parents and his south London and suburban Middlesbrough upbringing. The book's thesis is that through the permissiveness of the Sixties and Seventies and the acquisitiveness of the Eighties, the Baby Boom generation, whom he labels the Cold War kids — much cooler — lost their parents' greatest qualities such as thrift, hard work, humility, deference and patience. Instead they became selfish and vain.

It's not a new argument but is a decent vehicle to expand on his favourite column topics, although it would have been nice if, in the chapter about selfish men abandoning their families, he had told us more about his own divorce. He left his new bride, TV presenter Rachel Royce, to spend time with his mistress Alicia Monckton, a 22-year-old receptionist at The Spectator. "I deserted my children for my own personal happiness," he admits, "it is as simple as that."

Another "look at us, silly old farts that we are" book out this month by US humorist P J O'Rourke is a much gentler read, more of a memoir and full of cutesy American humour that borders on smug. Both writers believe in Baby Boom exceptionalism (O'Rourke begins and ends most paragraphs with "we") — the idea that everyone born between 1945 and the mid-Sixties, despite their political differences, has a nodding and winking similarity, a kind of instinctive unity — they basically get what each other are about.

To which the best riposte must be: Rod Liddle.

Go to eveningstandard.ca/booksdirect to buy Liddle's book for £12.99, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p

Liddle is, by some margin, Britain's most prolific pundit.