Best of
Humor

1978

A Fine and Pleasant Misery


Patrick F. McManus - 1978
    McManus.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School


Louis Sachar - 1978
    There was a terrible mistake - Wayside School was built with one classroom on top of another, thirty stories high (The builder said he was sorry.) Maybe that's why all kinds of funny things happened at Wayside-especially on the thirteenth floor.

Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures Vol. 1


Robert Lynn Asprin - 1978
    This collection includes Another Fine Myth, Myth Conceptions, Myth Directions, Hit or Myth, Myth-ing Persons, and Little Myth Marker. Includes illustrations by Phil Foglio.

Doonesbury's Greatest Hits: A Mid-Seventies Revue


G.B. Trudeau - 1978
    Reprints DOONESBURY comic strips from 1975-7.

Mafalda 1


Quino - 1978
    Laughter and reason go hand in hand, in this series thats been translated to over 15 languages, and most of its message and humor remains as accurate and entertaining as it was thirty years ago.

Six of One


Rita Mae Brown - 1978
    Then of course, there’re Louise and Julia, the boldly eccentric Hunsenmeir sisters. Wheezie and Juts spend their whole lives in Runnymede, cheerfully quibbling about everything from men to child-rearing to how to drive a car. But they never let small-town life keep them from chasing their biggest dreams—or from being true to who they really are. Sparkling with a perfect combination of sisterhood and sass, Six of One is a richly textured Southern canvas—Rita Mae Brown “at her winning, fondest best”(Kirkus Reviews).

The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts


Shinta Cho - 1978
    "Both informative and blunt, the book provides young readers with solid facts as well as plenty to snicker about, including sage advice ('Don't hold them in--pass that gas!)."--"Publishers Weekly." Full color.

Donald Duck


Carl Barks - 1978
    Presents 10 short novels in comic strip form featuring Donald Duck and examines his development as a character in comic books, strips, and movies over the years.

Another Fine Myth


Robert Lynn Asprin - 1978
    Now, with a purple-tongued demon named Aahz as a companion, he's on a quest to get even.

Tales of the City


Armistead Maupin - 1978
    A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, and outrageous—unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.

National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody


P.J. O'Rourke - 1978
    With stories and photos that are as remarkably plausible today as they were in 1978, the "Republican-Democrat" is littered with grade-A-quality humor. Including National News, Local News, and More Local News, a Sports Section, Entertainment, Television Listings, Travel, Real Estate, Gardening, Your Pet, Women's Pages, Classified Ads, a Swillmart Discount Store Advertising Supplement, a Parade Magazine Parody, a Sunday Week Local Magazine, and Eight Pages of Comics, it will take you back in time even if you were never there to begin with. Any fan of "The Onion" will discover its recipe for success-take "National Lampoon's Sunday Newspaper," rejigger the news to reflect today's absurdity, and maintain the "National Lampoon's" pitch-perfect mimicry of editorial and design. Ask any comedy writer at work today, and she or he will tell you that "National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook "and "National Lampoon's Sunday Newspaper" are the sine qua non of written humor.

Tiny Footprints


B. Kliban - 1978
    Visual jokes and puns, fantasies and long thoughts-taking the reader to here, there, and Nirvana (sometimes with a side trip to Portland). A New York Times bestseller. 248,000 copies in print.

Pogo's Double Sundae: Two Unabridged Helpings of Past Pogo Classics, the Pogo Sunday Parade, the Pogo Sunday Brunch


Walt Kelly - 1978
    

Great Piratical Rumbustification & the Librarian and the Robbers


Margaret Mahy - 1978
    Or has he reformed? Before you can say "Yo Ho Ho" the Terrapin household has become headquarters of the century's biggest pirate party.The Librarian and the Robbers is an equally tickling tale of a band of wicked robbers who one day carry off Serena Laburnum, a beautiful librarian. Follow what happens as the lovely and learned Miss L. not only outwits the robbers, turning them into outstanding citizens, but also teaches them the everlasting pleasures of library science.

Saul Steinberg


Saul Steinberg - 1978
    Steinberg is a frontiersman of genres, an artist who cannot be confined to a category. He is a writer of pictures, an architect of speech and sounds, a draftsman of philosophical reflections. His line of a master penman and calligrapher, aesthetically delectable in itself, is also the line of an illusionist formulating riddles and jokes about appearances. In addition, it is a 'line' in the sense of organized gab. Because he is attracted to pen and ink and pencils, and because of the complex intellectual nature of his products, one may think of Steinberg as a kind of writer, though there is only one of his kind. He has worked out exchanges between the verbal and visual meaning, that have caused him to be compared to James Joyce. His art-monologues bring into being pictures that are words, and words that have the solidity of things, and that suffer the misfortunes of living creatures. Steinberg's compositions cross the borders between art and caricature, illustration, children's art, 'art brut', satire, while conveying reminiscences of styles from Greek and Oriental to Cubist and Constructivist. As a cartoonist, Steinberg tantalizes those who wish to separate high art from the mass media. Granted that he is witty, formally ingenious, a great calligrapher, 'Is he an artist?' Steinberg is aware that he is a borderline case, and seems content with the ambiguity of his position. To display Steinberg's drawings and paintings in an art museum is, however, to define them as art.

I May Not Be Totally Perfect, but Parts of Me Are Excellent


Ashleigh Brilliant - 1978
    . . illustrated epigrams that will inspire your personal quest for telling communication. Fresh, funny, wistful, bright; they may well reflect some of your own deep or whimsical thoughts. Ashleigh's Pot Shots are acclaimed, told and re-told, by young and old, secular and religious, mainstream and offbeat they speak to everyone. What they say: Clifton Fadiman: Most enjoyable; Isaac Asimov: Good one-liners; Richard Armour: Wise, and witty; People magazine: Artistic trailblazer, Ashleigh Brilliant coins epigrams that would drive Oscar wild.>Ashleigh's Pot Shots are copyrighted and the names Pot Shots and Brilliant Thoughts are registered trademarks.

Rumpole and the younger generation


John Mortimer - 1978
    In reminiscent mood, Horace Rumpole, barrister, looks back to his successful defence of 16-year-old Jim Timson, member of a large and industrious family of south London.

How to Eat Like a Child: And Other Lessons in Not Being a Grown-up


Delia Ephron - 1978
    Made into a children's television special and a musical theater revue performed across the country each year, How to Eat Like a Child offers advice beyond the artful etiquette of food consumption. Ephron also teaches us "How to Laugh Hysterically," "How to Have a Birthday Party," "How to Torture Your Sister," and much, much more. As the Washington Post Book World noted, `After the giggles of recognition have subsided, one thing will be very clear: all adults are kids in grown-ups' clothing."

And Then We'll Get Him!


Gahan Wilson - 1978
    

Shady Grove


Janice Holt Giles - 1978
    Its people are descendents of the men and women who settled the country during the Revolutionary War, and their ways have not changed much in the past two hundred years.Shady Grove chronicles the riotous adventures and misadventures of Broke Neck's Fowler clan, among them Frony, the feisty and articulate widow who narrates the tale, and Sudley, the thrice-married farmer and quintessential "ridge man." Sudley, who wields considerable political influence among his kin and community, isn't happy when a new preacher from "outside" comes in from his city-based denomination with ideas about what's wrong in Broke Neck. What follows is a compelling example of the tension between urban viewpoints and rural traditions, a central conflict in Appalachia.The town's delicate balance is disturbed when other outsiders -- federal revenue officials and four suitors responding to a personal ad -- converge in an unlikely climax that is both comic and telling. In her last book of fiction about her adopted Kentucky homeland, Janice Holt Giles cleverly dispels the common stereotypes of rural peoples by creating honest, believable characters who cherish their soil, churches, songs, and lines of kin. Shady Grove is a novel that makes us laugh and touches our hearts.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.

Rumpole of the Bailey


John Mortimer - 1978
    It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients. The original show has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.Contents:“Rumpole and the Younger Generation”;“Rumpole and the Alternative Society”;“Rumpole and the Honourable Member”;“Rumpole and the Married Lady”;“Rumpole and the Learned Friends”;“Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade”

The Super Dictionary


Mary Z. HolmesCynthia Lewin - 1978
    

The Beagle Has Landed


Charles M. Schulz - 1978
    Charlie Brown retaliates against the kite-eating tree, Snoopy plays in a tennis tournament with the fearsome Molly Volley, and Marcie and Patty caddy at the Ace Country Club.

The Thirteenth Labour of Hercules


Fazil Iskander - 1978
    

Ripping Yarns


Michael Palin - 1978
    This book contains the scripts of six classic episodes, beginning with "Tomkinson's Schooldays," in which Palin plays a boy trapped in a bizarre boarding school where the pupils beat the headmaster and the school bully wields all the real power. When Tomkinson is caught trying to escape his punishment, he is to be entered in a grueling long-distance hopping race. Will his leg hold out? "Escape from Stalag Luft 112B" finds Palin in a German prisoner-of-war camp during the First World War. Sent there because of his repeated attempts to break out of every other camp, he finds his fellow prisoners curiously reluctant to make a bid for freedom. Undaunted, and determined to become the first man to escape from Stalag Luft 112B, he begins to build a glider from empty toilet-paper tubes.

McBroom and the Beanstalk


Sid Fleischman - 1978
    McBroom gets ready to tell his many preposterous stories in the World Champion Liar's contest only to be disqualified for telling the truth.

The Last Guru


Daniel Pinkwater - 1978
    One harmless bet on a horse race starts a chain of events that turns a 12-year-old into one of the world's richest people and a spiritual guru.

Something Wonderful Right Away: An Oral History of the Second City & the Compass Players


Jeffrey Sweet - 1978
    The name of the group was the Compass Players, and their ranks included Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Shelley Berman, and Barbara Harris. A few years later, another comedy theatre based on the same principle of spontaneity was opened -- the legendary Second City. This company, too, has produced dozens of major talents who have gone on to apply their experience of being funny on the spot to theatre, television and film. "SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY" captures all the craziness on-stage and off through the interviews with prominent alumni, among them: Alan Alda, Paul Mazursky, Valarie Harper, Stiller and Meara, Alan Arkin, Robert Klein, David Steinberg, Gilda Radner, and Joan Rivers. In between the routines and anecdotes are observations on the relationship of the popular stage to the community it serves and reflects and, most important, on the art of theatrical improvisation, which this book brings to rich, vivid life.

Errol Flynn: A Memoir


Earl Conrad - 1978
    (Biography).

The Arts of David Levine


David Levine - 1978
    

Animations Of Mortality


Terry Gilliam - 1978
    

The Book of Terns


Peter Delacorte - 1978
    Long out of print, The Book of Terns reterns with a vengeance, with a spiffy new cover and several never-before-seen cartoons to accompany the old favorites.

The Phantom of the Open Hearth: A Film for Television Co-Ordinated by Leigh Brown


Jean Shepherd - 1978
    

The Smoke-Off


Shel Silverstein - 1978
    Smoking, Rolling, Competition, Yankee stadium.

50 Norman Rockwell Favorites


Christopher Finch - 1978
    contains 50 of Norman Rockwell's work. Norman Rockwell is the master of the art of illustration, an art that helped transform as technical advances that occurred during his lifetime brought high quality color reproduction to the newsstand of the world. Here are 50 of his famous illustrations to enjoy

Off-the-Wall Mad Libs


Roger Price - 1978
    Someone asks for a part of speech: a verb, a noun, an adjective, or an adverb. We've included definitions and examples of the parts of speech in case you've forgotten. Players call out their ideas to fill in the blanks and in the end, you have a story reeling from one silly sentence to another until nothing makes sense. That's what you call a Mad Lib®, the world's greatest word game. Players have been howling with friends or laughing all to themselves for over 35 years!Now that you know what Mad Libs® are, you're ready to play Off-The-Wall Mad Libs®. From "Paul Revere" and "Albert Einstein" to "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Three Little Pigs" this zany group of Mad Libs ® will make you the hit of the party.

Four Plays for Coarse Actors


Michael Frederick Green - 1978
    II Fornicazione is a "grim" tale of operatic adultery, poison and mayhem. Streuth is the crime story Agatha Christie would never have dared to write. A Collier's Tuesday Tea combines the kitchen with the coal mine with an irreverent glance at D.H. Lawrence. All's Well that Ends As You Like It pushes the genius of the bard to its limits while filching lines from most of his plays. In all, cues are missed, effects fail and props are lost and confusion reigns, but the coarse actors struggle on.

Skippy and Percy Crosby: The Life and Work of a Great American Cartoonist


Jerry Robinson - 1978
    

Walt Disney's Christmas Treasury


Walt Disney Company - 1978
    An anthology of Christmas stories, illustrations, comic strips, posters, and other miscellanea featuring Disney characters.

Prinz Eisenherz


Hal Foster - 1978
    His past is a mystery, his courage and loyalty unparalleled--and it is he who has been chosen to safeguard the beautiful Princess Ilene, herself as brave and able as any knight who stands by Arthur's side. For foul treachery has invaded the realm, drawing a hero reborn into the land of the barbarian--to battle a dread evil for the imperiled future of Camelot. . .and to fulfill a destiny as magnificent as his name.Reproduces the award-winning cartoon adventure strip, from its 1937 inception to January 1940, taking the popular hero from his childhood, through service with King Arthur, to his victory over the Huns.

Mad Clowns Around


MAD Magazine - 1978
    Here's Your Ticket To THE GREATEST SHOW OF MIRTH Written and Illustrated by THE CLOWN PRINCES OF HUMOR & SATIREADMIT ONE SuckerGood Only With Actual Purchase Of This Book! Sneaking A Peek Is Not Allowed--And Also Cheap!

Mad's Big Book Of Spy Vs. Spy Capers And Other Suprises


Antonio Prohías - 1978
    

The Loves Of Snoopy


Charles M. Schulz - 1978
    

An Informal Gathering


Pat Oliphant - 1978
    Everything from Watergate, seal-clubbing, the energy crisis and the SALT talks. The cartoons appeared in the Denver Post (1973-1975) and the Washington Star (1975-1977).

My Aunt Otilia's Spirits =: Los Espiritus de Mi Tia Otilia


Richard A. García - 1978
    One night, her curious nephew stays awake and watches in astonishment as Aunt Otilia's bones lift out of her body, float through the air, and fly through the window--although it is closed!

Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective


Robert Grossbach - 1978
    

How to Be Funny


R.L. Stine - 1978
    A dark cloud follows you everywhere, the class bully is bored with you, and your mom forgets your name. What's worse, no one laughs at your jokes! What to do? Read this book! Show the world what's really funny!A guide to being funny at parties, when in trouble, or while telling a joke.

The Honeymooners Companion


Donna McCrohan - 1978
    For serious students and fans, notes on how the show was created, written and filmed. (Mostly in chaos and exclamation points. The failsafe: get back to the kitchen table.) For lovers of detail, the Hong Kong Garden Chinese Restaurant, the Bushwick Hospital (where Ed went when a manhole cover landed on his head) and an exhaustive list of 500 Honeymooners references, from Aberdeen Proving Grounds to Ziggy.Scrapbook-style, with essays, reminiscence, photos, songs ("You're My Greatest Love"), note son Chauncy Street today, and updates on Ralph and Ed and all the Alices and all the Trixies. Plus selected sewer jokes and favorite fat jokes, interviews with Jackie Gleason and his real-life boyhood pals, comments by Audrey Meadows and Art Carney and original contributions by Imogene Coca, Bob Hope, Norman Lear, Sam Levenson, Bob Cummings, Joan Rivers. And away we go! 53,000 copies in print.