Tragically I Was an Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook


Peter Cook - 2002
    His unique gifts and the way he led the transformation of British comedy (from music hall to perverse absurdity) and his clear comic influence on Monty Python's Flying Circus and every show since, has been much written about. But never before has there been a collection of Cook's own writings. "Tragically, I Was an Only Twin" gathers the treasures of Cook's comic career, from school and university via Beyond the Fringe alongside Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore, to his sureal, satirical journalism for" Private Eye." It includes his monologues, the cream of his irreverent essays, and highlights from his much celebrated partnerships with Dudley Moore as Pete & Dud and Derek & Clive. Illustrated with his own drawings, this is the first, the only, and certainly the definitive collection of the transformative genius of comedy that was Peter Cook.

Westward Ha!


S.J. Perelman - 1948
    Perelman's companion is cartoonist Al Hirschfield, whose drawings capture the very essence of Perelmania.

Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host: The Autobiography of Larry Sanders


Garry Shandling - 1998
    (He had a very big bed.) "Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host" is a Hollywood autobiography like no other because it reveals all -- the loves and losses, the pain and joy, the shrinks and doctors -- and it is uproariously funny. Larry Sanders has written a book that will have the same ten-year run that his show did. Larry Sanders is no ordinary man, and this book will show America and the world how very different he is. Fueled by an enormous need to be loved and gifted with a talent beyond even his own, Sanders has risen to the top of his field -- and dropped -- while retaining all of his dignity and modesty. As he says on the first page of his story, "I'm famous. Actually, I'm very, very, very famous." Sanders's story is laced with the names (and some of the faces) of the thousands of celebrities who have sought his attention for a decade -- and Sanders tells the world what he thinks of all of them, even if it hurts his own feelings."Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host" is a Hollywood tell-all that will forever change the nature of this kind of book. While Geraldo Rivera used his sexual exploits to shamelessly promote his book, Sanders uses his conquests of thousands of women to illustrate his compassion and grace. "If it sells, it sells," Sanders says. "There was never a hidden agenda." While Roseanne used her book to promote her manypersonalities, Sanders's book shows how a straight-shooter can not only survive but thrive in Hollywood. Most of all, Sanders, in truthfully disclosing all aspects of his life and those of people he has never met, hopes to heal and entertain. Sanders has written a wonderfully hilarious book that will make some of his fans wish he were back.

In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash


Jean Shepherd - 1966
    In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.In God We Trust, Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth.A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri.

Staying Alive


Matt Beaumont - 2004
    He’s started telling the truth at work. He’s borrowed a stack of cash from a man with a gun, a speech impediment and no grasp whatsoever of APR. He’s also taking drugs and – God help him – he’s started dancing. Badly. To trance. And now he’s on the run with a human version of Muttley and a teenage girl called Fish.Which is strange, because a few weeks ago Murray didn’t even burn the candle at one end. But when his doctors tell him he has only months to live, he gives his boring old self the boot, relaunches a new, improved Murray and falls in love with a passion he didn’t know was in him.His old self, of course, would tell him he’s digging his own grave. But he’ll be needing one of those soon enough anyway, won’t he?

MAD's Greatest Artists: The Completely MAD Don Martin


Don Martin - 1976
    His immediately recognizable style--featuring bulbous noses, wild sound effects, and the legendary "hinged feet"--was filled with broad and daring slapstick and routinely broke new ground. A surprisingly quiet man, Martin's work spoke volumes as he left an indelible mark on several generations, influencing the style of many illustrators while shaping the sense of humor of countless misguided youths. He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004. Says Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side: "Don Martin was the one who really stood out."Now, it is with great pride that Running Press, in collaboration with MAD, launches the MAD’s Greatest Artists: The Completely MAD Don Martin (MAD’s Greatest Artists Series). For the first time ever, here is the complete collection of every piece of art Don Martin published in MAD throughout his extraordinary thirty-year tenure (1957-1987). With all of Martin's strips, covers, posters, and stickers--presented in chronological order--it is nothing less than a masterpiece of comic genius. Complementing Martin's opus of published works are letters, sketches, and rare photos providing an in-depth look at the artist at work. Plus, scattered throughout are notes and original illustrations--commissioned for this volume--paying tribute to the artist and penned by MAD's most-notable personalities, including Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Sergio Aragonés, and more. There are also notes by the likes of Jim Davis (Garfield) and a foreword by Gary Larson. A collector's item and object d'art in its own right, this deluxe two-volume slipcased edition will be the season's must-have gift book for the millions whose childhoods--and subsequent adulthoods--would not have been the same without MAD MAGAZINE and Don Martin.

The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries


Marilyn Johnson - 2006
    She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all. Now she leads us on a compelling journey into the cult and culture behind the obituary page and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.

Son of Soup: A Second Serving of the Least Worst Scripts


Rob Grant - 1996
    A second collection of "Red Dwarf" scripts consisting of six scripts, one from each of the first six series, printed in reverse order, with the most recent script coming first.

The Cat Manual


Michael Ray Taylor - 2012
    The author "discovered" the feline world's best-kept secret in a file hidden on his mother's computer by her cat, Cleo, and now shares it with humanity for the first time. Topics covered range from avoiding visits to the vet, to the artful display of captured prey, to getting in the way of a human trying to read anything, including this paragraph. Upon publication, Cleo denied authorship and hired a team of lawyers, all of whom have their claws out, but despite her best efforts the word is spreading: The Cat Manual is hilarious for cat-lovers of all ages. From the author of Cave Passages and Dark Life.

Help! I'm Laughing and I Can't Get Up: Fall-Down Funny Stories to Fill Your Heart and Lift Your Spirit


Liz Curtis Higgs - 1998
    Reveals the four humor personalities...and which category you fit in. Helps readers realize that God gave us a funny bone...we just need to find out how to use it.

No Such Thing as a Snow Day: A Collection of Reader-Submitted Medical Stories


Kerry Hamm - 2019
    First responders share unique baby names, we hear stories about clueless newbies, bitter veterans, and patients with good intentions but bad ideas. We also hear more about the not-so-happy side of this industry. Grab a blanket, a mug of hot chocolate, and cozy up in front of the fire to catch up with submissions from people like you!

Di and I


Peter Lefcourt - 1994
    A fast, funny trip through the looking glass into an oddly engaging mix of royal family scandals and Hollywood derring-do.--Los Angeles Daily News.

The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass


Bill Maher - 2011
    With another presidential campaign on the horizon and a stellar set of real- life characters to have fun with-"New Rule: If Charlie Sheen's home life means he can't have a TV show, then I say Newt Gingrich can't be president"-this enlightening and important book may be the best thing you pretend to read all year.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments


David Foster Wallace - 1997
    In this exuberantly praised book — a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner — David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.

The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time


Hunter S. Thompson - 1979
    Thompson’s bestselling Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style.Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling “Gonzo Papers” is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style.Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed “gonzo”—“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful ‘60s and ‘70s.