You've seen his energetic stand-up performances on HBO, Comedy Central, and in venues across the globe. Now, for the first time, Lewis Black translates his volcanic eruptions into book form in Nothing's Sacred, a collection of rants against stupidity and authority, which oftentimes go hand in hand. With subversive wit and intellectual honesty, Lewis examines the events of his life that shaped his antiauthoritarian point of view and developed his comedic perspective. Growing up in 1950s suburbia when father knew best and there was a sitcom to prove it, he began to regard authority with a jaundiced eye at an early age. And as that sentiment grew stronger with each passing year, so did his ability to hone in on the absurd. True to form, he puts common sense above ideology and distills hilarious, biting commentary on all things politically and culturally relevant. "No one is safe from Lewis Black's comic missiles." (New York Times) You have been warned....

    “Babel in California” told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel’s last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel’s secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature. Batuman’s subsequent pieces—for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence—including her own.

    There have been rule books before—stacks upon stacks of them—but this book is unlike any other rule book you have ever read. It will not make you rich in twenty-four hours, or even seventy-two hours. It will not cause you to lose eighty pounds in a week. This book has no abdominal exercises. I have been doing abdominal exercises for most of my adult life, and my abdomen looks like it’s always looked. It looks like flan. Syrupy flan. So we can just limit those expectations. This book does not offer a crash diet or a plan for maximizing your best self. I don’t know a thing about your best self. It may be embarrassing. Your best self might be sprinkling peanut M&M’s onto rest-stop pizza as we speak. I cannot promise that this book is a road map to success. And we should probably set aside the goal of total happiness. There’s no such thing. I would, however, like for it to make you laugh. Maybe think. I believe it is possible to find, at any age, a new appreciation for what you have—and what you don’t have—as well as for the people closest to you. There’s a way to experience life that does not involve a phone, a tablet, a television screen. There’s also a way to experience life that does not involve eating seafood at the airport, because you should really never eat seafood at the airport. Like the title says, I want us all to achieve little victories. I believe that happiness is derived less from a significant single accomplishment than it is from a series of successful daily maneuvers. Maybe it’s the way you feel when you walk out the door after drinking six cups of coffee, or surviving a family vacation, or playing the rowdy family Thanksgiving touch football game, or just learning to embrace that music at the gym. Accomplishments do not have to be large to be meaningful. I think little victories are the most important ones in life.” — From the Introduction

    When Teddie Arizona, woman of mystery, crawls out of the wreckage of her plane and into their lives with a $5,000,000 secret, things start to get interesting.When T.A.’s “husband,” F. Rank Pantaker, dispatches his henchmen to retrieve the money—and the girl—Lick and Al find themselves trying to outrun the bad guys and protect a damsel in distress. Is T.A. out to cheat her cheatin’ husband, or is she really just trying to stop an illegal scheme cooked up by F. Rank and the infamous Ponce de Crayon, Vegas’s most glamorous tiger tamer? Is she playing Lick—or is it love? Will Al Bean’s cockeyed plan, an able assist from Cody, Lick’s cowboy sidekick, a brigade of old-time rodeo reunioneers, and twenty miles of duct tape be enough to stop F. Rank’s nefarious schemes, reform a career party girl, and change the hearts and minds of ten of the world’s most thrill-seeking billionaires? Can Cody keep Lick from climbing onto raging bull Kamikaze’s back one more time? Can true love triumph over shoot-outs at the not-so-okay corral and close encounters with white tigers? Hey, this is Baxter Black—what do you think? With its colorful cast of characters, rip-roaring humor, and inventive language, this caper will have you riding high long after it gallops to a thunderously satisfying conclusion.

    Caroline Knapp's readers are known not just for their number, but for their intense connection to her work. Knapp connected so well in part because of the intense focus she brought to her subjects. Now, with 'The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays', Knapp shows us that her vision through a wider lens is as brilliant as through a narrow one. These essays paint the fullest picture of this wonderful writer that we've yet seen, but they are also a full portrait of a writing life, showing how the same themes can engage -- and expand -- a writer over a lifetime. Knapp, who died in 2002, was considered one of the country's more intelligent and graceful voices in memoirs. This collection also shows her to be a witty, provocative observer of the world around her.

    Share the author’s emotions when being surrounded by enemy anti-aircraft flak, when having to crash land twice, during occasions when the aircraft’s response was violent and uncontrollable, when having a large turkey buzzard crash through the windscreen into the cockpit when the aircraft was 200 feet off the ground and traveling nearly 600 mph, just to mention a few of those memorable occasions the author shares.Along the way, the readers are given vivid accounts of the joys and delights, the fears and terrors, the frustrations and fulfillments, the thrills, intensity, and humor involved in the fighter pilot’s unique life, and the special and inseparable bond that exists in the fighter pilot community. The author’s account is also deeply personal as he shares his opinion of the top leadership, both civilian and military, during the Vietnam War. His criticism is shared by the vast majority of those who fought in that war, and includes the leadership’s lack of understanding of the enemy, a prime requisite when going to war, their lack of will to do what was necessary to win, a prime requisite when going to war, and worst of all, their unconscionable willingness to allow the U.S. military to suffer substantial losses in personnel and resources by fighting a war they were not allowed to win.The author’s pride in being part of the fighter pilot community can be summed up by the final phrase of a poem about military aviators written by an unknown author that goes, “Because we flew, we envy no man on earth."About the Author:Darrell Ahrens is a former U.S. Marine, Air Force fighter pilot and operations staff officer, high school teacher, and pastor. He holds degrees from Chapman University, Boston University, and Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as diplomas from the Armed Forces Staff College, the Air War College, and the National Defense University.

    This one-of-a-kind anthology captures the spine tingling adventures of daring men and women who venture into Alaska's vast wilderness and look death in the eye. Danger Stalks the Land relates gripping episodes of animal attacks, avalanches, aircraft disasters, fishing, hunting, and skiing accidents, and chronicles risky climbs and reckless mountaineering amid Alaska's fantastic peaks. Through exhaustive research and interviews, author Larry Kaniut has captured in one volume, the terror and beauty of man's attempt to explore a vast and unforgiving land.

    With a "genius for illuminating that sometimes ephemeral apogee in people's lives when they prove capable of generating a brightly burning spark" "(Columbia Journalism Review), " Robert McG. Thomas Jr. commemorated fascinating, unconventional lives with signature style and wit."The New York Times" received countless letters over the years from readers moved to tears or laughter by a McG. Eschewing traditionally famous subjects, Thomas favored unsung heroes, eccentrics, and underachievers, including: Edward Lowe, the inventor of Kitty Litter ("Cat Owner's Best Friend"); Angelo Zuccotti, the bouncer at El Morocco ("Artist of the Velvet Rope"); and Kay Halle, a glamorous Cleveland department store heiress who received sixty-four marriage proposals ("An Intimate of Century's Giants"). In one of his classic obituaries, Thomas described Anton Rosenberg as a "storied sometime artist and occasional musician who embodied the Greenwich Village hipster ideal of 1950's cool to such a laid-back degree and with such determined detachment that he never amounted to much of anything." Thomas captured life's ironies and defining moments with elegance and a gift for making a sentence sing. He had an uncanny sense of the passion and personality that make each life unique, and the ability, as Joseph Epstein wrote, to "look beyond the facts and the rigid formula of the obit to touch on a deeper truth."Compiled by Chris Calhoun, one of Thomas's most dedicated readers, and with a fittingly sharp introduction from acclaimed novelist and critic Thomas Mallon, "52 McGs." will win legions of new fans to the masterful writer who transformed the obituary into an art form.

    While these are elements of popular culture, they aren’t all it has to offer. Pop culture may not cure diseases, topple political regimes, or make scientific breakthroughs, but it does play a vital role in the story of humanity.In fact, it’s pretty hard to define the human experience without it. And it’s impossible to create pop culture without the human experience. Popular podcaster Knox McCoy understands this, and so do the tens of thousands of listeners who tune in to hear him talk about pop culture every week on his wildly popular podcast, The Popcast with Knox and Jamie.In The Wondering Years, Knox explores this idea of connecting popular culture to his own experiences. Through hilarious yet poignant stories, he reflects on how pop culture has helped shape his life and carve out the foundation of his faith. While the three cultural tentpoles—the South, the Church, and Sports—defined many aspects of his East Tennessee upbringing, it was pop culture that most definitively influenced Knox and his sense of the world at large. Through books, television, music, and movies, Knox found many of the answers he was searching for about God and the universe and why we are all here. The Wondering Years is a hilarious look back at the key influences that shaped Knox’s formative years and his faith, a reminder of our own encounters with pop culture that have shaped each of our formative years and continue to influence us today.

    Her hilarious and deeply relatable look at the challenges of womanhood in a changing world became a cultural touchstone for women everywhere. Now Guisewite returns with her signature wit and warmth in this debut essay collection about another time of big transition, when everything starts changing and disappearing without permission: aging parents, aging children, aging self stuck in the middle.With her uniquely wry and funny admissions and insights, Guisewite unearths the humor and horror of everything from the mundane (trying to introduce her parents to TiVo and facing four decades' worth of unorganized photos) to the profound (finding a purpose post-retirement, helping parents downsize their lives, and declaring freedrom from all those things that hold us back). No longer confined to the limits of four comic panels, Guisewite holds out her hand in prose form and becomes a reassuring companion for those on the threshold of "what happens next." Heartfelt and humane and always cathartic, Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault is ideal reading for mothers, daughters, and anyone who is caught somewhere in between.

    Despite early stardom through his childhood role in the motion picture "Stand By Me," and growing up on television as Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Wil left Hollywood in pursuit of happiness, purpose, and a viable means of paying the bills. In the oddest of places, Topeka, Kansas, Wil discovered that despite his claims to fame, he was at heart "Just a Geek." In this bestselling book, Wil shares his deeply personal and difficult journey to find himself. You'll understand the rigors, and joys, of Wil's rediscovering of himself, as he comes to terms with what it means to be famous, or, ironically, famous for once having been famous. Writing with honesty and disarming humanity, Wil touches on the frustrations associated with his acting career, his inability to distance himself from Ensign Crusher in the public's eyes, the launch of his incredibly successful web site, wilwheaton.net, and the joy he's found in writing. Through all of this, Wil shares the ups and downs he encountered along the journey, along with the support and love he discovered from his friends and family. The stories in "Just a Geek" include: Wil's plunge from teen star to struggling actor, discovering the joys of HTML, blogging, Linux, and web design, the struggle between Wesley Crusher, Starfleet ensign, and Wil Wheaton, author and blogger, gut-wrenching reactions to the 9-11 disaster, moving tales of Wil's relationships with his wife, step-children, and extended family, and the transition from a B-list actor to an A-list author.Wil Wheaton—celebrity, blogger, and geek—writes for the geek in all of us. Engaging, witty, and pleasantly self-deprecating, "Just a Geek" will surprise you and make you laugh.

    In the process, he sets his hair on fire, is attacked by wild turkeys, and proposes marriage to a woman in New Orleans. The result is a surprisingly tender testament to love.

    You would too if you found out that your boyfriend was having an affair with a Peekapoo or if you had to pretend to be honeymooning with your father in order to upgrade to first class. Welcome to Chelsea's world - a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense.In this hilarious, deliciously skewed collection, Chelsea mines her past for stories about her family, relationships, and career that are at once singular and ridiculous. Whether she's convincing her third-grade class that she has been tapped to play Goldie Hawn's daughter in the sequel to Private Benjamin, deciding to be more egalitarian by dating a redhead, or looking out for a foulmouthed, rum-swilling little person who looks just like her... only smaller, Chelsea has a knack for getting herself into the most outrageous situations. Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea showcases the candor and irresistible turns of phrase that have made her one of the freshest voices in comedy today.

    It’s probably socially irresponsible even to attempt to cheer up.But if you’re determined to give it a go, you might enjoy this eclectic collection (or eclection) of David Mitchell’s attempts to make light of all that darkness. Scampi, politics, the Olympics, terrorism, exercise, rude street names, inheritance tax, salad cream, proportional representation and farts are all touched upon by Mitchell’s unremitting laser of chit-chat, as he negotiates a path between the commercialisation of Christmas and the true spirit of Halloween. Read this book and slightly change your life!

    With candor and detail, he talks about his famous contract dispute with Jerry Jones; the stunning transformation of the Cowboys, from a 1-15 team to two-time Super Bowl champs; his feelings about Jimmy Johnson and how Jimmy left the Cowboys; his teammates and friends Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, and Charles Haley; his opponents around the league, including Lawrence Taylor, Thurman Thomas, and the whole rowdy defense in Philadelphia.