It is a history based on the author Matty Simmons' involvement with National Lampoon magazine and its various spin-offs, including the film Animal House.

[3] The book "covers National Lampoon's turbulent editorial periods of fluctuating staff and private vendettas, its haphazard film projects..., its recurrent controversy — from libel suits by Walt Disney and Liza Minnelli to advertising and newsstand boycotts spurred by guardians of public morality — and finally its disastrous takeover in the late '80s by a group led by one of the actors from Animal House.

[5] Kirkus Reviews wrote of the book: Matty Simmons, the ousted chairman and founding father-figure of National Lampoon, has the corner office in his personal history of its first two twisted decades of reinventing American humor.

The National Lampoon is the closest thing the Baby Boom has to an institution for its sense of humor, having produced, under Simmons, some of the most tasteless and hilarious writing, theater revues, radio shows, and movies.

But Simmons's chronicle relies too often on oddly mundane showbiz anecdotes and shaggy dog stories, as if there were a generation gap in his sense of humor.