The Onion's Finest News Reporting - The Onion is the world's most popular humor periodical. Its first book, Our Dumb Century, was a New York Times #1 best-seller and winner of the 1999 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Now The Onion returns with Volume One of the paper's greatest, most hard-hitting stories, including: --Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia: Operation Vowel Storm Will Make Countless Bosnian Names More Pronounceable --Jesus Christ Returns to NBA --Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes --I Can't Stand My Filthy Hippy Owner by Thunder the Ferret

"The funniest publication in the United States." --The New Yorker "Makes its readers teary-eyed with laughter." --Washington Post "Genius...the most consistently hilarious spot on the flogged horse of American comedy." --Esquire

Started by two University of Wisconsin undergraduates in 1988, The Onion began as an alternative weekly newspaper -- with an emphasis on parody -- in Madison. While some believe The Onion got its name from the slang for a "juicy news story," it was actually named when the two founders were short on cash and eating onion sandwiches. Editor-in-Chief Scott Dikkers worked as a cartoonist during The Onion's first year, then with Pete Haise, the current publisher, bought the paper from its founders. "For a long time we were kind of a Weekly World News parody combined with your usual sophomoric college-humor publication," says Dikkers. In 1995 Dikkers shifted the focus of the paper to a straight news parody and found the voice for which The Onion is known today.

In 1996, The Onion made an unprecedented launch into cyberspace, and theonion.com soon became one of the nation's most heavily visited Web sites. The newspaper edition is available in bookstores and newsstands nationwide. With a half-million readers online, more than 350,000 readers of the print edition, and millions of listeners to The Onion Radio News (broadcast on 72 stations nationwide), The Onion has been called "the most popular humor periodical in world history" by The New Yorker.

And the plaudits don't stop there. The Chicago Tribune called it "genius" and Rolling Stone named Scott Dikkers one of the nation's top-ten favorite writers.

Scott Dikkers and the editorial staff of The Onion -- Robert Siegel, Todd Hanson, Maria Schneider, Tim Harrod, Carol Kolb, John Krewson, Mike Loew, Joe Garden, Ben Karlin and David Javerbaum -- are based in Madison, Wisconsin.

"The Onion is laugh-out-loud, go-tell-your-friends, get-angry-you-didn’t-think-of-it funny." -- Conan O’Brien.

"Outside of maybe Dario Fo, an Italian who few are sure exists, the Onion people make the most consistently perfect and excoriating social commentary we currently have. But will those Nobel bastards honor them, too? Only God, our merciless and just God, knows." -- Dave Eggers.

"The funniest publication in the United States." -- The New Yorker.

"This publication is tasteless and destructive to our shared values. Read it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean. Seriously, what else could make me laugh -- much less laugh uproariously -- while being offended week after week after week?" -- Al Gore.

"The Onion is the funniest thing in news since Dan Rather’s spooky stare." -- Matt Groening.

"Brutal satire that rushes into the far reaches of race, class, sexuality, and culture where many publications -- and critics -- fear to tread." -- Chicago Tribune.

"The Onion, unlike any other entity in our media culture, offers a refreshingly honest look at our complicated life." -- Ken Burns.

The Onion has quickly become the world's most popular humor publication, misinforming half a million readers a week with one-of-a-kind social satire both in print (on newsstands nationwide) and online from its remote office in Madison, Wisconsin. Witness the march of history as editor-in-chief Scott Dikkers and The Onion's award-winning writing staff present the twentieth century like you've never seen it before.