If you keep specific books around to cheer you after a trying day, Phil Elwood’s All the Worst Humans will be a dandy addition to the pile. However fractious your boss, you can rejoice that she is unlikely to sit beside blood-covered walls with an automatic weapon in her lap.

Elwood, a public-relations expert, could’ve spent his time counseling associations, unions, and well-off narcissists, none of which are scarce in Washington, DC. Instead, he writes, “There’s no rest for those who help the wicked.” His first assignment when he became a PR practitioner? Fly to Las Vegas and corral the drunken, loathsome twin sons of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

There follows an unforgettable passage that could be labeled, “How I Kept Gaddafi’s Kids from Carnage While Quaking with Fear.” Note that one of the sons liked to be called “doctor” because he had a degree in torture from Moscow State University. (We shall trust it was honorary.)

Elwood relates that, after arranging the men’s cocaine buy soon after he landed, “I’m needed at the high-roller lounge. The Libyans arrived straight from the pool wearing robes and sandals and are being denied entry” because of the hotel’s dress code. “Please,” Elwood asks a twin, “can you just put on some shoes?”

“No,” he responds.

The next day, one twin is furious because their four-car motorcade is not permitted lights and sirens. Later, “the doctor” doesn’t like waiting at a hotel valet stand. So, writes Elwood, he “releases a wail. He throws his hands up in the air and jumps up and down like a toddler who’s been told it’s his bedtime.”

As the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up. Elwood doesn’t have to try; you can count on his professional recollections — a major chunk of the book, the rest being autobiographical — to be laugh-out-loud funny.

The author landed in Washington in 2000 after being booted out of the college he was attending on a debate scholarship. Alas, the preacher’s son got caught trying out the cocaine given to him by waiters at his night job in a Mexican restaurant. Through a friend of a friend (how very Washington), he got a low-on-the-totem-pole job with the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In it, Elwood cheerfully did anything that needed doing for Moynihan and several of his Congressional buddies.

One day, ducking into a hearing on the Enron debacle, Elwood had two insights. First: “The Hill is a real-world version of debate team. Everyone talks fast, and there are winners, losers and nukes.” Second: He fit in. DC would be his forever home.

Days later, as senators threw brimstone at the Enron sinners and reporters took notes, Elwood wondered if anyone had prepped the Enron guys. It was no accident that the pols had the sharp one-liners and headline-making quotes; their staffs well knew what played with the press. So, he asked himself, where were the five good lines the Enron guys could use over and over to deflect the heat? Or the carefully prepared responses for the predictable questions they were bound to get?

In other words, it struck him that, with sound PR advice, Enron’s officers still would’ve looked like saps or villains — but earnest and reflective ones, at least. Thus, Elwood’s career was born.

Mixed in with the stories and personal information are multiple observations about how to be a successful publicist. Think “PR 101” for innocent readers. Sometimes, the author Makes a Point so obvious, so pedantic, that you grit your teeth. This is a minor criticism, though. While these observations are less entertaining than those about bad guys, they’re still thought-provoking. Overall, reading this book is like sitting down for a beer with your funniest, best-storytelling friend.

Yet beneath the quips and facts, it’s clear that Elwood is either notably courageous, fast on his feet, or both. It’s one kind of brave to tell corporate and political bigwigs what they don’t want to hear. But Elwood’s forays have exposed him to entirely different danger levels. Picture being flown to a Central African hideout to sit down with Boko Haram leaders who are surrounded by 15-year-old bodyguards caressing Uzis. Then looking the leaders in the eye and saying thanks for the check, fellas, but you really don’t have a PR problem. The issue is your perpetually unpaid soldiers are selling their guns for food money. “What you have is an arms trafficking problem.”

Wow. Just, wow.

Salley Shannon’s writing has appeared in many national magazines and newspapers.

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