It is a fascinating diary... It is shorter than Barbara Castle's... and although it is rather more accurate than Dick Crossman's, itis distinctly funnier' - Lord Allen of Abbeydale (formerlyPermanent Secretary at the Home Office) in The Times'It has an entertainment and educational value which isunique. It is uproariously funny and passes the acid test ofbecoming more amusing at every subsequent reading... I willgo so far as to claim that in the characters of Jim Hacker andSir Humphrey Appleby, Messrs Lynn and Jay have createdsomething as immortal as P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Woosterand Jeeves' - Brian Walden in The Standard

    Based on Dovlatov's experiences as a journalist in the Soviet Republic of Estonia, this is an acidly comic picture of ludicrous bureaucratic ineptitude, which obviously still continues.

    Wodehouse entices us into the demesne of Blandings Castle - an apparent paradise where it is eternal high summer, with jolly parties, tea on the lawn and love trysts in the rose garden. But for Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, there is always something to disturb this tranquil scene.This omnibus contains Something Fresh, Summer Lightning and three short stories (The Custody of the Pumpkin, Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best and Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey).

    If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. Thus begins John Waters's autobiography. And what a story it is. Opening with his upbringing in Baltimore ("Charm City" as dubbed by the tourist board; the "hairdo capital of the world" as dubbed by Waters), it covers his friendship with his muse and leading lady, Divine, detailed accounts of how Waters made his first movies, stories of the circle of friends/actors he used in these films, and finally the "sort-of fame" he achieves in America. Complementing the text are dozens of fabulous old photographs of Waters and crew. Here is a true love letter from a legendary filmmaker to his friends, family, and fans.

    McManus celebrates the hidden pleasures, unappreciated lore, and opportunities for disaster to be found in such outdoor recreations as camping, hunting, and fishing

    Children and parents alike will love following disaster-prone Henry through his adventures in cooking, cleverly written and illustrated by Robert Quackenbush. Don't forget to snatch up the other three books in the Henry the Duck Series: Henry's Important Date, Henry Goes West, and Henry Babysits.

    Completely recolored in the style of the 1930s and 1940s Disney animated cartoons. Illustrated.

    His uniquely depraved wit has been forced again on an unsuspecting public' via Tom Foolery, the stage revue based on his ever-trenchant observation of the American scene. This new songbook, with old favorites unavailable for years as well as never-published songs, is the most comprehensive ever assembled. It contains the words, tunes, piano accompaniments, and guitar chords for these thirty-four classics:The Irish BalladFight Fiercely, Harvard!Be PreparedThe Old Dope PeddlerThe Wild West Is Where I Want to BeI Wanna Go Back to DixieLobachevskyThe Hunting SongI Hold Your Hand in MineMy Home TownL-YWhen You Are Old and GrayThe Wiener Schnitzel WaltzPoisoning Pigeons in the ParkA Christmas CarolBright College DaysIn Old MexicoShe's My GirlThe ElementsThe Masochism TangoNational Brotherhood WeekMLF LullabyThe Folk Song ArmySmutSend the MarinesNew MathPollutionSo Long, MomWho's Next?Wemher Von BraunWe Will All Go Together When We GoI Got It from AgnesSilent EThe Vatican Rag

    Embracing the tradition of the fairy tale, but adding Jones' inimitable comic imagination and originality, each story makes a perfect bedtime read for children - and grown ups! 'Could become a 'modern classic' ...the book is a joy' - Brian Patten, "Spectator".

    It reads like a self-help book, but what a difference a Pig makes!

    How the world could have spared the menace and heartbreak of Adolf Hitler.Why the passengers of the Titanic did not have to die.  The real fate of America's most famous outlaws--Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  How the secret career of one of television's most famous faces could change his reputation forever.How divine intervention saved a Baptist choir from fiery annihilation.  From the scandalous to the miraculous, here are true stories that will amaze and astound you--stories that reveal the mystery behind some of history's strangest facts by daring to tell "the rest of the story."

    From the first publication of Angels on Horseback in 1957, the Thelwell pony entered the language and the libraries of horse-lovers everywhere.

    Quark is a down-on-his luck pot-smuggler hiding out in the mountains of Colombia with his dog, High Pockets, and a small band of banditos led by the irascible Jose. Only months before, these three and their fearless associates were rolling in millions in cash and high-grade marijuana, eluding prosecution on "ridiculously false" drug and terrorism charges. But times have quickly grown lean, and to liven up their exile, Jose decides to mug a family of American tourists.Among the spoils are physics texts, which launch Mr. Quark on a side-splitting, boisterous adventure north to California, where he confronts the owner of the books with his own theories on relativity, the nature of the universe, and looking for the meaning of life in all the wrong places....

    One dozen prime examples of the late writer's stories about crime, criminals, and cunning detectives include "The Crime Wave at Blandings," "Strychnine in the Soup," and "Ukridge's Accident Syndicate"

    The tiny island paradise of Zenkali is turned upside down when a civil war breaks out, and the island is invaded not only by the British Military, but by the world press and a fanatical group of conservationists - and all because of a silly bird.

    A selection from Creature Comforts.

    Gathers selections from the popular comic strip about Hagar, a Viking, and his family, and describes the background of the artist and the characters in his comic.

    B. Trudeau could give us that hazardous experience: under the skin of the body politic, sometimes scandalously, often outrageously, always hilariously...and for the first time in his shadowy career, the author speaks out (see interview)! (from cover)

    Starting in the 1930s, Costello attained enormous fame touring the burlesque circuits with straight man Bud Abbott (1895-1974). Their live skits (including "Who's on First?"), radio programs, and films such as One Night in the Tropics, Buck Privates, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and In the Navy made comic history.Behind the scenes, however, Costello faced numerous crises: a bout with rheumatic fever that left him bedridden for months, the drowning death of his young son, and constant haggles with Universal Studios over its reluctance to adequately finance productions of Abbott and Costello films. Lou's on First goes beyond Costello's clownish persona to explore his Pagliacci nature: the private demons behind the happy public face, the heartbreaking moments in an otherwise storybook marriage, the business ventures soured by unscrupulous managers, and the true nature of the breakup of his twenty-one-year partnership with Bud Abbott.

    Dissecting modern relationships with surgical skills, Girls and Boys is a book-length collection that provides fans with a fascinating glimpse of Barry's early style and her undeniably original talent. Line drawings.

    Full-color illustrations.

    Ruminations on lardbutts. bra-padders. Good ol'boys and giggling Yankee girls. The joys of white bread and knowing your way around a 1957 Chevrolet. And lots more from one of America's favorite writers.

    . . 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.

    

    The originator of the classic pony cartoon, Thelwell's work has been beloved of children and equestrians for decades, and its popularity seems set to continue. Since their debut appearance in "Punch" over 40 years ago, Norman Thelwell's cartoons and drawings have delighted millions of people all over the world. He died in February 2004.

    If you've seen Zippy in the newspaper and can't make heads or tails of it, trust me. It reads better in large doses. This first Zippy book collects material from 1974 to 1985.

    

    From the wild and wacky world of a favorite funnyman, a dozen truer-than-life tales of tailgating on the Jersey Tumpike, infuriating infants, and other everyday catastrophes, defeats, and humiliations that are the familiar fate of Americans everywhere.

    The sequel, Pidgin To Da Max Hana Hou, also became a best-seller. The anniversary edition combines the words and illustrations in those two collections in a paperback format.

    In these essays, Prudence Mackintosh describes the delights and terrors of living with little boys who are determined to be boys, despite the carefully nonsexist childrearing practices of the 1970s. With telling vignettes of boyish disasters that drive her to despair, as well as the rare quiet moments of hugs and confidences that make it all worthwhile, she perfectly captures the early years when a young mother still looks for "the real mother" to come and bail her out.

    

    Teenage Romance: Or How to Die of Embarrassment

    Populated by guys and dolls, show girls and gangsters, Runyon's world captured the imagination of a vast public "more than somewhat," as he would have put it. It is a world of sentiment and surprise, and above all, humor. Runyon intorduced millions of readers to a milieu of colorful smalltime hoodlums and hustlers--the likes of Nathan Detroit, Harry the Horse and Nicely Johnson--and their "dolls," such as Dark Dolores, Madame La Gimp, and Miss Missouri Martin. Runyon described his characters in the inimitable idiom her adapted from real-life street talk. Runyon's ever-present narrator serves as our eyes and ears, whether the scene is Broadway, the racetracks of Miami and Saratoga, football games in Ivy League New England, or even (in his Christmas fable, "The Three Wise Guys") Bethlehem (Pennsylvania). Many readers know Runyon's work better from movies than from his writings--hardly surprising, considering that more than two dozen films have been made from his stories, including Guys and Dolls, The Lemon Drop Kid and Pocketful of Miracles from this collection. This volume once again makes available an outstanding selection of Runyon's hugely entertaining Broadway stories, many of them for the first time in paperback

    . . 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.

    However, from the 1930s to the 1970s she did contribute a series of short reminiscences to the "New Yorker." "Scenes of Childhood" collects and orders those reminiscences, thus forming a volume that reads as a joyous, wry and moving testament to the experience of being alive. The collection evokes a recognisably English world of nannies, butlers, pet podles, public schools, 'good works' and country churches, but the resonances of these stories are universal - funny and touching by turns.

    Book by Glen Rounds

    For one thing, my mother was nothing like the stereotype. She used to abandon me on our cabin floor for days at a time while she went out deer hunting...

    Comic strips show the daily trials and pleasures of family life for Elly, her husband John, a dentist, and their children Michael and Elizabeth.

    Rasmussen's Book of One-Arm Cookery

    Fred has an amazing evening after the phone breaks and his big brother tries to fix it.

    An unprepared actor in an unnamed play is forced to take the place of a leading actor.

    

    When the Forgetful Bear family decides to go on a picnic, they forget the food, the car, their grandfather, and their own names, but they have a good time anyway.

    A real incentive to read this classic again and again.

    This book is jammed full of simple instructions for many situations in life. Need to roast an ox? Repel cavalry? Tie a bow tie? All instructions are here, clear, concise, and fully illustrated. This remarkable reference book explains how to Build a log cabin, Catch a cockroach, Magnetize a walnut, Play the castanets, Ride a dolphin, Drill for oil, Meet the Pope, Find a blind spot, or Become a saint. Hard-earned experience spanning many cultures and centuries leads to creative advice and counsel. Want to prevent a nail from splitting wood? Simply wipe the nail on soap before hammering.The off-beat retro artwork and text is fun and engaging. How to Hold a Crocodile is an amazing collection of information, advice, tips, and instructions guaranteed to entertain and satisfy anyone's curiosity.

    Levenson does the New York shtik -- the bracing hard life (""We had a permissive father. He permitted us to work""); culture and excursions (""Next time I take you anyplace I'm gonna leave you home!""); commerce (butcher-bargaining vs. today's supermarket); food (things that melt in the mouth and harden in the stomach, viz., ""a delicate potato pancake could be reborn as a hockey puck""); love and marriage and death. Levenson's low-keyed style allows him to slip into both genial sermonizing and solemn matters with ease. A nice man, a nice book for the family circles with East Side ties.

    Sergio Aragonés puts on his THINKING CAP and comes up with A TOPPER to his seven previous CROWNING ACHIEVEMENTS...and when you finish trying this skullduggery on for size, we guarantee that you, too, will be MAD AS A HATTER!

    

    

    

    The unmistakable Down East Maine accent enhances the stories on the companion CDs and audiocassettes, while the book contains Mark Andres's wonderful pencil sketches.

    Most people know of and love his elementary mechanical world - ancient wooden cogwheels, intricate pulleys, fragile gantries, ingenious tunnels, magnets, and steam kettles kept on the boil by a lighted candle or two; the whole enterprise held together by knotted string and operated by serious workmen with a sprinkling of soberly top-hatted company directors in charge. Heath Robinson's world is now crystallized for all time, so long as machines remain machines and human beings need reminding that that is all they are.

    

    In the fall of 1979 Cameron Crowe at 22 years of age walked into the office of Principal William Gray's office and asked permission to attend classes for the full length of the school year to research a book he was to write of his experiences inside the walls of Ridgemont High and Redondo Beach, California. This is the day-by-day journal of horny and wasted semi-blank adults who don't know a thing about their future.

    

    Everyone's heard of old man MacDonald's farm.But, truth be told, MacDonald wasn't much of a farmer.He didn't even have animals -- at first.So he got himself some.And there went the farm.

    

    Val was designed for total politeness, Aqua was the ultimate seductive hostess. Together they were the finest America could produce, until something went wrong and they did the two things robots were programmed NOT to do. First, they fell in love. Then they built a baby...

    Where to go and what to see - Accommodations on 5 Fabulous Planets & Their Satellites. Welcome to Solar System M-17. Lying nearly ten billion light years away from our own solar system, M-17 consists of five planets and seven natural satellites. Here is the only official guide, served up with the care and quality that have become synonymous with the Transgalactic name. Your guidebook provides you with everything you need to know: where to go, what to do and how to get there. Concise histories are provided for each civilization, basic working vocabularies of each planet are included in dictionary format, and all accommodations have been carefully rated. Your travels through hyper-dimensional space will begin on the Transgalactic Star Cruiser, which is equipped with holograph libraries, casinos, special sex facilities, a four-star cuisine, and services to meet every need of creaturely comfort. But the planet themselves are the real stars. DIS - home of Tukkadis, fierce beasts adapted to endure fire-storms, and the bristling Alladis, whose phosphorescent excrement has lent a charming pastel tone to the planet's surface. MORANA - the Kashpagus' oozing planet. Here, you'll tour on foot and on the marvel of Moranses locomotion, the aoo. ARGOS - the planet to barbarian to bear, home of the Brutes and the good-natured trolls. URIEL - communication is entirely by odor on this decidedly pungent planet. VIRTUS - it isn't called the scholar's retreat for nothing. While touring all the don't miss sights described in this guide, Jeff Rovin has written several books, including "From the Land Beyond, Beyond" and "The Fantasy Almanac."

    B. S. Haldane, when asked by a clergyman what he could infer about God from the works of creation, responded, “He must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles.” Were I asked to infer something essential about Homo sapiens from his work, I should probably reply that this zoological odd-ball required humor to lighten a life taken too seriously. How else can we explain the fact that very profession has its underground classic of humorous self-deprecation and verse? Garstang’s Larval Forms has long filled this role for evolutionary biology. But, as a residual Victorian, Garstang turned out some mighty stuffy poems—and recapitulatory theory of the details of invertebrate morphology do no reside on the frontier of modern biology. But voyeurs and hedonists can now rejoice, for John Burns has produced a worthy successor, a work full of all that is modern in evolutionary biology—mathematical modeling, ecological strategies, ethological theories and, oh yes, plenty of sex.

    

    

    

    The second edition is corrected, revised and updated and includes an audio CD demonstrating the sounds of the German language. William Odom is professor of foreign languages at the University of Mississippi. He recently served as a pronunciation consultant for the New Orleans Opera's production of Tannhuser. He has also traveled extensively in Europe working with professional and amateur singers, improving their German diction.

    Aided by her coach, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty prepares for a big ice skating competition.