The Braindead Megaphone


George Saunders - 2007
    George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is composed of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther Forbes, and leads the reader across the rocky political landscape of modern America. Emblazoned with his trademark wit and singular vision, Saunders's endeavor into the art of the essay is testament to his exceptional range and ability as a writer and thinker.

One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories


B.J. Novak - 2014
    Novak's One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut collection that signals the arrival of a welcome new voice in American fiction.Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, Novak's assured prose and expansive imagination introduce readers to people, places, and premises that are hilarious, insightful, provocative, and moving-often at the same time.In One More Thing, a boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes - only to discover that claiming the winnings may unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins - turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A school principal unveils a bold plan to permanently abolish arithmetic. An acclaimed ambulance driver seeks the courage to follow his heart and throw it all away to be a singer-songwriter. Author John Grisham contemplates a monumental typo. A new arrival in heaven, overwhelmed by infinite options, procrastinates over his long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who debate how to stage an intervention in the era of Facebook. We learn why wearing a red t-shirt every day is the key to finding love; how February got its name; and why the stock market is sometimes just... down.Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, from the deeply familiar to the intoxicatingly imaginative, One More Thing finds its heart in the most human of phenomena: love, fear, family, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element that might make a person complete. The stories in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader.

Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead


Robert Brockway - 2010
    . . Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody is bringing panic back. Twenty illustrated, hilariously fear-inducing 
essays reveal the chilling and very real experiments, dangerous emerging technologies, and terrifying natural disasters that soon could—or very nearly already did—bring about the end of humanity. In short, everything in here will kill you and everyone you love. At any moment. And nobody’s told you about it—until now: •   Experiments in green energy like the HiPER, which uses massive lasers to create a tiny “contained” sun; it’s an idea that could save the world if it doesn’t consume us all in a fiery fusion reaction first. •   Global disasters like the hypercane—a hurricane so large it could cover all of North America and shoot trailer parks into space!•   Terrifying new developments in robotics like the EATR, which powers itself on meat—an invention in the running for “Worst Decision Made by Anybody.”

Of All Things


Robert Benchley - 2000
    It is just one of those facts which never get bruited about.Since that time I have practically lived among the newtsI first became interested in the social phenomena of newt life early in the spring of1913, shortly after I had finished my researches in sexual differentiation among amoeba. Since that time I have practically lived among newts, jotting down...

Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland


Dave Barry - 2016
    We know only that, any minute now, something will. Every few months, Dave Barry gets a call from some media person wanting to know, “What the hell is wrong with Florida?” Somehow, the state’s acquired an image as a subtropical festival of stupid, and as a loyal Floridian, Dave begs to differ. Sure, there was the 2000 election. And people seem to take their pants off for no good reason. And it has flying insects the size of LeBron James. But it is a great state, and Dave is going to tell you why. Join him as he celebrates Florida from Key West at the bottom to whatever it is that’s at the top, from the Sunshine State’s earliest history to the fun-fair of weirdness and gunfire (“Our motto: ‘Come back! We weren’t firing at you!’”) that it is today.It’s the most hilarious book yet from “the funniest damn writer in the whole country” (Carl Hiaasen, and he should know). By the end, you’ll have to admit that whatever else you might think about Florida—you can never say it’s boring.

Confessions of a Call Centre Worker


Izabelle Winter - 2017
    Could you keep your cool while talking to all levels of stupid? Would you be able to wear a headset all day without wanting to throw it out of the window? All calls are recorded, analysed and timed to the second. Average handling time (AHT) is discussed as if it's the very meaning of life and managers are always coming up with new ways to shave milliseconds from each call. Is it acceptable to only have a total eight minutes a day for visits to the toilet or coffee machine? Imagine not being allowed to hang up on someone who is screaming abuse down the line at you. Welcome to the Call Centre! Izabelle worked in call centres for many years; from insurance to home shopping, from selling advertising to discussing loans. Finally in the early hours one morning, she decided enough was in fact far too much and left her final call centre job the same day, never to return. On her way out of the door for the final time she vowed she would write a book about life in a call centre. Here is that book. Read about call centres in general, memorable customers and staff. How do staff stay sane? What is Big Red? Are cranberries the true meaning of Christmas? Why would you have leather trousers round your ankles in a lift? How not to impress your boss. Izabelle shares these and many other true tales from her years of incarceration in UK call centres.

Hate Mail from Cheerleaders: And Other Adventures from the Life of Reilly


Rick Reilly - 2007
    A 22-year veteran of Sports Illustrated and a 10-time National Sportswriter of the Year, Reilly took over SI's back page in 1998, and his column immediately attracted a devoted following, including the legions of fans who helped make his first collection, The Life of Reilly, a New York Times best seller in 2000. Now comes Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, 100 of Reilly's favorites, along with a new foreword and column postscripts by the author. Alternately sidesplitting and heartwarming but always opinionated and provocative, these pieces are the best work by the best columnist in the business.

The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous


Khushwant Singh - 2013
    This book will appeal not only to admirers of Khushwant Singhs writing but also to anyone Interested in the history, politics and socio economic scenario of twentieth century India.People profiled in this book include Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Amrita Sher Gil, Begum Para, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, M. S. Golwalkar, Mother Teresa, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Dhirendra Brahmachari, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, General Tikka Khan, Phoolan Devi, Giani Zail Singh and Bhagat Puran Singh.About the AuthorKhushwant singh is one of Indias best known and most widely read authors and columnists. He was founder-editor of Yojana and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, National Heraldand the Hindustan Times. His first book, The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories, was published in 1950 and he has published several acclaimed and bestselling books of fiction and non-fiction in the six decades since. He has also translated the work of major Punjabi and Urdu poets and writers, as well as the Japji and the Rehras: The Morning and Evening Prayers of the Sikhs.

Loudmouth: Tales (and Fantasies) of Sports, Sex, and Salvation from Behind the Microphone


Craig Carton - 2013
    The station manager who hired him was the first to recognize his considerable on-air talent, and helped start what has become a legendary radio career. Often compared to Howard Stern, Carton has hosted a series of highly rated shows, and in 2007 he joined WFAN, where he and Boomer Esiason host an eponymous show every morning for four hours out of a studio in New York City.In this debut book, Carton invites the reader to join him as he recounts tales from his suburban youth, defends his long-held love affair with the New York Jets, reminisces about the shenanigans of some of the highest paid and most celebrated athletes playing today, and reflects on his work as one of radio’s craftiest, most hilarious personalities ever to get behind the microphone.

Yoga Bitch: One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment


Suzanne Morrison - 2011
      But things don’t go quite as expected. Once in Bali, she finds that her beloved yoga teacher and all of her yogamates wake up every morning to drink a large, steaming mug…of their own urine. Sugar is a mortal sin. Spirits inhabit kitchen appliances. And the more she tries to find her higher self, the more she faces her cynical, egomaniacal, cigarette-, wine-, and chocolate-craving lower self.  Yoga Bitch chronicles Suzanne’s hilarious adventures and misadventures as an aspiring yogi who might be just a bit too skeptical to drink the Kool-Aid. But along the way she discovers that no spiritual effort is wasted; even if her yoga retreat doesn’t turn her into the gorgeously calm, wise believer she hopes it will, it does plant seeds that continue to blossom in surprising ways over the next decade of her life.suzannemorrison.blogspot.com

The Witches Are Coming


Lindy West - 2019
    From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.”We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers


Fred Rogers - 2019
    Through songs, puppets, and frank conversations, Mister Rogers instilled the values of kindness, patience, and self-esteem in his viewers, and most of all, taught children how loved they were, just by being themselves. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood reimagines the songs from the show as poetry, ranging from the iconic "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" to the forgotten gems. The poems deal with topics such as difficult feelings, new siblings, everyday routines, imagination, and more.

If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 2013
    For each occasion, Vonnegut's words were unfailingly unique, insightful, and witty, and they stayed with audience members long after graduation.This expanded second edition includes more than sixty pages of further thoughts from Kurt (whose good advice wasn’t limited to graduation speeches).As edited by Dan Wakefield, this book reads like a narrative in the unique voice that made Vonnegut a hero to readers of all ages. At times hilarious, razor-sharp, freewheeling, and deeply serious, these reflections are ideal for anyone undergoing what Vonnegut would call their “long-delayed puberty ceremony”—marking the passage from student to full-time adult.

Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane


The Staff of the Late Show - 2018
    It is the first children’s book that demonstrates what not to say after a natural disaster. On September 19, 2018, Donald Trump paid a visit to New Bern, North Carolina, one of the towns ravaged by Hurricane Florence. It was there he showed deep concern for a boat that washed ashore. “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal,” said President Trump to hurricane victims. “Have a good time!” he told them. The only way his comments would be appropriate is in the context of a children’s book—and now you can experience them that way, thanks to the staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Whose Boat Is This Boat? is an excellent teaching tool for readers of all ages who enjoy learning about empathy by process of elimination. Have a good time!

The Book of Virtues


William J. Bennett - 1993
    Bennett's bestselling The Book of Virtues is an inspiring anthology that helps children understand and develop moral character—and helps parents teach it to them.Responsibility. Courage. Compassion. Honesty. Friendship. Persistence. Faith. Everyone recognizes these traits as essentials of good character. In order for our children to develop such traits, we have to offer them examples of good and bad, right and wrong. And the best places to find them are in great works of literature and exemplary stories from history. William J. Bennett has collected hundreds of stories in The Book of Virtues. From the Bible to American history, from Greek mythology to English poetry, from fairy tales to modern fiction, these stories are a rich mine of moral literacy, a reliable moral reference point that will help anchor our children and ourselves in our culture, our history, and our traditions—the sources of the ideals by which we wish to live our lives. Complete with instructive introductions and notes, The Book of Virtues is a book the whole family can read and enjoy—and learn from—together.