If there is anyone who could bring humor, albeit gallows-humor, to losing both parents within twelve months, it is Christopher Buckley. His father, William F. Buckley, was and is still very well known; his mother Pat was also well known, but to a different group of people. Both parents were monumentally unique personalities in divergent ways, and their recalcitrance to do what they wanted may have both shortened and lengthened their lives, i.e., his mother's smoking and his father's addiction to writing, all of which their son documents in a very revealing and loving way.
This book, which became a movie, began as a series of newspaper articles about a Juilliard-trained, mentally ill homeless man in downtown Los Angeles. It touches on many issues prevalent in modern society from mental illness to homelessness to the power of music, and friendship to the (potential) fate of newspapers in our Internet world.