The slim, gimmicky volume is by a fellow named Joe Quint, who runs a graphic design studio and maintains a blog (www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com); his book is the latest in the current trend of internet spinoff publications (see also: Stuff White People Like: the book and I Can Haz Cheezburger: A LOLCat Colleckshun). In the bio blurb on the back cover, Quint insists that he "doesn't hate old people."

72 Things... isn't so much a collection of cheap shots as it is a mildly amusing (and occasionally informative) compendium of pop culture phenomena that've emerged over the last 72 years (i.e since McCain's birth). As Quint asserts in his introduction-slash-mission statement, "[B]y picking ubiquitous products, items from popular culture, famous people that seem older than McCain but really aren't (paging Keith Richards...), I'm able to both hammer home the idea of how age (unlike gender or race) could impact the effectiveness and success of a president and also have some fun at the same time."

Don't know if I entirely buy his loftier sociopolitical commentary claims, but I'll admit that it's interesting to get a sense of the remarkable shifts that have occurred in popular culture in the last three-quarters of a century, and to discover the relative newness of so many inventions, ideas and entities (2-ply toilet paper! Nachos! Social Security!).

--Sarah Liss