Humor Memoir

Decades before The Daily Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour proved there was a place on television for no-holds-barred political comedy with a decidedly antiauthoritarian point of view. In this explosive, revealing history of the show, veteran entertainment journalist David Bianculli tells the fascinating story of its three-year network run---and the cultural impact that's still being felt today.

Perfect for anyone yearning for a simpler, slower pace of life, as well as fans of Dr. Larimore's popular Bryson City series, The Best Medicine is a tender and insightful collection of stories chronicling one young doctor's passage from inexperience to maturity as a physician, husband, father, and community member. Filled with characters colorful and crusty, warmhearted and hotheaded, witty and winsome, these captivating stories glow with warmth, love, and humor. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll wish Dr. Larimore was your doctor.

Lauren Weedman is not okay. She's living what should be the good life in sunny Los Angeles. After a gig as a correspondent with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she scored parts in blockbuster movies, which led to memorable recurring roles on HBO's Hung and Looking. She had a loving husband and an adorable baby boy. In these comedic essays, she turns a piercingly observant, darkly funny lens on the ways her life is actually not okay.

Matt Rife is well aware that he’s both the most loved and the most controversial comic in America today. And honestly, he thinks that’s your problem. Matt reveals (without apology, of course) what led him to becoming comedy’s biggest lightning rod before he reached thirty, in a story full of bold and hysterical takes on everything from Justin Bieber tramp stamps and rap battles with ex-cons to Matt’s struggles with depression and his many brushes with failure before finally hitting it big.

Born Julius Marx in 1890, the brilliant comic actor who would later be known as Groucho was the most verbal of the famed comedy team the Marx Brothers, his broad slapstick portrayals elevated by ingenious wordplay and double entendre. In his spirited biography of this beloved American iconoclast, Lee Siegel views the life of Groucho through the lens of his work on stage, screen, and television.

Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendarily bad productions. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business

Introduction to Le Tour Once more I want to inspire you to travel – to France. I have been delighted at the lovely responses I have received to my books and have enjoyed supplying more precise suggestions to some of you personally. This book ties together our journeys in France as a cohesive tour de France. Most of this book comprises of fresh writing but to make the tour flow I have included relevant excerpts from my four book French Travel Series. If you are unfamiliar with those books, I hope you will go on to enjoy the full story of our experiences in French regions such as Provence, ...

Fred Stoller has played the annoying schnook in just about every sitcom you’ve seen on TV - Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, Hannah Montana, My Name Is Earl - and was even a staff writer for Seinfeld, but he’s never found a solid gig. When it comes to Hollywood, it’s a case of always the bridesmaid and never the bride, except in his case he’s always the snarky waiter, the mopey cousin, or Man Number Two.

“It made me laugh so hard I cried. Not quite pissing-pants funny, but definitely entertaining.” — MWW in Mn, Amazon reviewer “The best book I’ve ever read!” — Soto (which to be fair, doesn’t mean much. Soto is in the book and also hasn’t read very many books.) “I hope you do a second one. That was epic.” — Some guy named Chris (not in the book, and I assume Chris reads) “Meh, it was okay.” —some dude on Facebook (Can’t win ’em all, I guess.) No medals. No glory. Just a bunch of barely-functioning paratroopers stuck overseas during COVID, trying to survive ...

For many families, the holiday season is—in a word—unhinged. In no family is that more true than in Danny Pellegrino’s, beloved podcast host of Everything Iconic and bestselling author. Inappropriately improvised monologues at the children's Christmas pageant, presents that land someone in the emergency room, or just sitting on the absolute roller coaster that is a Hallmark movie marathon, the holidays are a strange and magical time in the Pellegrino household. And nobody knows this better than Danny.

A "carnal autobiographical tour-de-force..." — Bay Area Reporter Tail in Two Cities takes you on a raunchy ride back through the 80s and 90s when HIV/AIDS was still considered a death sentence. Tail in Two Cities starts in New York in 1985 when the City was in shock as the disease snaked its way through the gay community felling thousands. Just off the plane from Florida at age 21, the author finds that the disease has sent gay life in New York City underground where he is determined to get what he moved there for. In 1988 Gilmore relocates to San Francisco where he becomes a safe sex ...

In 1963, 30-year-old Friedman - who had recently quit his job as a Boston advertising executive and returned to his hometown of New York to become a theatrical producer - opened a coffee house for Broadway performers called the Improvisation. His goal? Simply to make a living, and if all went according to plan, to also make enough professional contacts to be able to mount his first Broadway show within a year's time. Later shortened to the Improv, its first West 44th Street location was in a seedy section of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen.

“Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash talking woman was not to be found.” So began Andy Corren's unforgettable obituary for his mother, Renay Mandel Corren, in her hometown paper The Fayetteville Observer, a tribute that went on to touch the hearts of millions around the globe. In his brief telling of the life and legend that was Renay, Andy captured only a slice of his loving and fabulously unconventional mother.

In the mid-70s, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away".

What do the lives of Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and other historical figures have in common with Paula Poundstone? In the hands of this wryly observant and self-deprecating comedian, the answer is outrageously funny and unexpectedly touching. Poundstone compares her crazy life to theirs, as she holds forth on her children, her career, and the time in her life when it appeared she would lose them both.

Letters I Wish My Dad Wrote Funny, Soulful, and Slightly Inappropriate Reflections on Life, Loss, and the Mystery of Socks What if your dad could still give you advice—just when you needed it most? He never wrote these letters. So I did. Letters I Wish My Dad Wrote is a love letter to grief, laughter, socks that vanish in the dryer, and the very human mess of being alive. Part memoir, part imagined correspondence, and part philosophical hug, this book is what happens when you lose your father… and remember that energy isn’t destroyed—it’s transformed. His voice didn’t disappear....

Despite the howling protests from his peers, no one's ever been more willing to spill the beans on what it's really like inside the pro cycling peloton than the sarcastic scribe Phil Gaimon. Building on the outrageous success of his hilarious 2014 debut, Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro, Gaimon gathers the absolute gems from his monthly Q & A feature column in VeloNews magazine into his new book, Ask a Pro.

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.

Throughout Zarna’s whole childhood in India, everyone called her “so American” just for reading the newspaper, having deep thoughts, and talking back to anyone over the age of thirty. When Zarna’s dad tried to marry her off at age fourteen, Zarna fled—first to the streets of Mumbai and ultimately to the glittering paradise of Akron, Ohio, where she got to become American for real.

With no camping or RV experience, author Sue Ann Jaffarian decided to chuck her life in Los Angeles for a life on the road in a van. Newly retired from her long-time career as a paralegal, she got rid of most of her belongings, packed up her laptop, and embraced a new adventure of traveling the country and writing full-time, adding travel writing to her career as a popular mystery novelist. Not always sunshine and unicorns, her experiences gave her more self-reliance, a new appreciation of nature, and a love for the quirky, interesting, and thought-provoking.