It was empty except for one heavy-set, gray bearded, grizzled guy who looked like he just rode his donkey into town after a long day of panning for silver in them thar hills. He ordered a Jack Daniels straight up, and that's when I overheard the young guy with the earring behind the bar asking him if he had ID. At first the old sea captain just laughed. But the guy with the twinkle in his ear asked again. At this point it became apparent that he was serious. Dan Haggerty's dad fired back, "You've got to be kidding me, son." The bartender replied, "New policy. Everyone has to show their ID." Then I watched Burl Ives reluctantly reach into his dungarees and pull out his military identification card from World War II. It's a sad and eerie harbinger of our times that the Oprah-watching, crystal-rubbing, Whole Foods-shopping moms and their whipped attorney husbands have taken the ability to reason away from the poor schlub who makes the Bloody Marys. What we used to settle with common sense or a fist, we now settle with hand sanitizer and lawyers.Adam Carolla has had enough of this insanity and he's here to help us get our collective balls back.In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks . . . And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy is Adam's comedic gospel of modern America. He rips into the absurdity of the culture that demonized the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, turned the nation's bathrooms into a lawless free-for-all of urine and fecal matter, and put its citizens at the mercy of a bunch of minimum wagers with axes to grind. Peppered between complaints, Carolla shares candid anecdotes from his day-to-day life as well as his past—Sunday football at Jimmy Kimmel's house, his attempts to raise his kids in a society that he mostly disagrees with, his big showbiz break, and much, much more. Brilliantly showcasing Adam's spot-on sense of humor, this book cements his status as a cultural commentator/comedian/complainer extraordinaire.

    He describes his idyllic childhood in Eastern Tennessee, helping to operate his grandfolks' backyard nuclear plant. He explains how he sold his soul to the Devil to make him a better bluesman, and how the Devil tried to sell it back. And he reveals what happened when Neil Diamond invited him to dinner, and more importantly, why he had to wear a hardhat. Along the way he tackles the questions we've all asked ourselves from time to time, such as, which element did people breath before oxygen was discovered in 1774? (neon.) What's the difference between iron and lead? (There isn't one: ask anyone who has ever been hit in the head by a length of pipe.) And, if Jesus was a carpenter, "How come not a single example of his craftsmanship exists, not even a crude chest of drawers?" In the tradition of Woody Allen's "Without Feathers", "Things Snowball" is a comic, inventive book: subversive and entertaining.

    Its rhythms are those of the seasons. Its memories are savored, it losses lamented. Baseball's graceful athleticism, formal strategy, and democratic spirit have ensured the devotion of Americans for generations, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents a vivid panorama of the game that is, in Roger Angell's words, "one of the reasons that summer exists." It offers a lively mix of stories, memoirs, poems, news reports, and insider accounts about all aspects of the great American game, from its pastoral 19th-century beginnings to its apotheosis as the undisputed national pastime. Here are the major leaguers and the bush leaguers, the umpires and broadcasters, the wives and girlfriends and would-be girlfriends, fans meticulously observant and lovingly, fanatically obsessed. Here too are the teams of storied greatness--the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Red Sox--and the luminaries who made them legendary.Unforgettable portraits of icons such as Christy Matthewson, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them." Poems included in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language--Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"--as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

    . .November 11, 1918. After four long, dark years of fighting, the Great War ends at last, and the world is forever changed. For soldiers, loved ones, and survivors, the years ahead stretch with new promise, even as their hearts are marked by all those who have been lost.As families come back together, lovers reunite, and strangers take solace in each other, everyone has a story to tell.In this moving, unforgettable collection, nine top historical fiction authors share stories of love, strength, and renewal as hope takes root in a fall of poppies.Featuring:Jessica BrockmoleHazel GaynorEvangeline HollandMarci JeffersonKate KerriganJennifer RobsonHeather WebbBeatriz WilliamsLauren Willig

    The Horrors is presented abecedarian-style, despoiling a beloved children's book tradition in order to explore personal hangups that range from the slightly awkward to the down-right terrible.Beginning with ‘A’ for ‘Adolescence,’ Demers recalls his sexless teenage years spent in a Trotskyist sect, and ‘B’ for‘Bombing’ offers a first-person account of the agonies of stand- up comedy gone wrong. ‘E’ for ‘End of the World’ exploresthe wacky world of Preppers (YouTube how-to-prepare-for- the-apocalypse experts), while ‘F’ for ‘Fat’ explains what life is like for those with both testicles and breasts. Other essays creep toward the pain side of the hilarity/agony line: ‘D’ for‘Depression’ and ‘M’ for ‘Motherlessness’ traverse topics that more balanced minds might hesitate to make light of.Fortunately, Demers does not let tact or sensibility deter him from pushing humour to its hysterical limit in orderto examine our deepest fears. With artful insight, he never minimizes the very real pain inherent in some topics and uses comedy as a catharsis rather than a numbing agent. Dark, smart and funny, in the sunny world of The Book of Awesome and The Happiness Project, The Horrors will be a shadow...or at least a shadow puppet.

    While she may have left her home in Alabama, married a New Yorker, forgotten how to drive, and abandoned the puffy headbands of her youth, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.Making a marriage magically tidy --Topeka three-way --How to stay happily married --Free to be...you and me (and childfree) --Room of one's own (that's full of gay men) --Other woman's Burberry coat --Peggy Sue got marijuana --What every girl should learn from ABC's The bachelor --Ghost experience --Party foul --Today was a good day --Straighten up and fly right. --Halloween people --Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1979 --How to be the best guest --When to write a thank-you note --An Emily Post for the apocalypse --How I watch pornography like a lady --Dumb boobs --Young ladies, listen to me --Seven things I'm doing instead of a neck lift --Serious women --That kind of woman

    A look at the absurdities of modern life.

    “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from forty-five years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.” For this book, Jerry Seinfeld has selected his favorite material, organized decade by decade. In page after hilarious page, one brilliantly crafted observation after another, readers will witness the evolution of one of the great comedians of our time and gain new insights into the thrilling but unforgiving art of writing stand-up comedy.

    "Here’s a partial list of things I don’t believe in: God. The Devil. Heaven. Hell. Bigfoot. Ancient Aliens. Past lives. Life after death. Vampires. Zombies. Reiki. Homeopathy. Rolfing. Reflexology. Note that 'witches' and 'witchcraft' are absent from this list. The thing is, I wouldn’t believe in them, and I would privately ridicule any idiot who did, except for one thing: I am a witch."For as long as Augusten Burroughs could remember, he knew things he shouldn't have known. He manifested things that shouldn't have come to pass. And he told exactly no one about this, save one person: his mother. His mother reassured him that it was all perfectly normal, that he was descended from a long line of witches, going back to the days of the early American colonies. And that this family tree was filled with witches. It was a bond that he and his mother shared--until the day she left him in the care of her psychiatrist to be raised in his family (but that's a whole other story). After that, Augusten was on his own. On his own to navigate the world of this tricky power; on his own to either use or misuse this gift.From the hilarious to the terrifying, Toil & Trouble is a chronicle of one man's journey to understand himself, to reconcile the powers he can wield with things with which he is helpless. There are very few things that are coincidences, as you will learn in Toil & Trouble. Ghosts are real, trees can want to kill you, beavers are the spawn of Satan, houses are alive, and in the end, love is the most powerful magic of all.

    In other words, perfect." - The Huffington PostAn amusing and captivating tale that's a delightful primer for laughing at the inevitable: If you're a dinosaur, all of your friends are dead. If you're a pirate, all of your friends have scurvy. If you're a tree, all of your friends are end tables. Each page of this laugh-out-loud, illustrated humor book showcases the downside of being everything from a clown to a cassette tape to a zombie. Cute and dark all at once, this hilarious children's book for adults teaches valuable lessons about life.From the sock whose only friends have gone missing to the houseplant whose friends are being slowly killed by irresponsible plant owners (like you), All My Friends Are Dead presents hilariously entertaining stories about life and existential predicaments.The simple yet effective imagery, the personification of inanimate objects, and short, hilarious quips come together to create an amusing adventure through each character's unique grievance and wide-eyed dilemmas.Written by Avery Monsen, an actor, artist, and writer and Jory John, a writer, editor, and journalist. They are friends, and neither is dead. Yet.All My Friends Are Dead is both the saddest funny book and the funniest sad book you'll ever read.Children's book written for adults Displayed in an accessible cartoon form

    His confidence games and sleight-of-hand scams relieved the filthy rich of their cash during America’s depraved Jazz era. He evaded the law like a figure from fiction, slipping into disguise, leaping from jail cell windows, and leaving sneering letters for his enemies at the Secret Service. In Handsome Devil, acclaimed journalist Jeff Maysh brings to life one of the 20th century’s most unforgettable public enemies, "Count" Victor Lustig, a dashing criminal mastermind and counterfeiter whose fake banknotes threatened to topple America’s economy. Written in staggering detail and culminating in a desperate manhunt led by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Handsome Devil reveals the real man behind the myth: A genius who applied his talents to crime, and who kept a loving wife and daughter in the dark for most of his storied career. Set during America’s original financial “bubble,” Lustig’s tale, from petty thief on the streets of Europe, to the most wanted man in the world, is the ultimate parable of American greed.Jeff Maysh investigates outrageous criminal plots and urban legends. His deeply immersive stories have appeared in publications including the Atlantic, Playboy, and Cosmopolitan. His story about the rise and fall of the “Bombshell Bandit” for the BBC was named the best crime story of 2015 by Longform.org. He is British, and lives in Los Angeles.Cover design by Adil Dara.

    Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own.Born Igor Shteyngart in Leningrad during the twilight of the Soviet Union, the curious, diminutive, asthmatic boy grew up with a persistent sense of yearning—for food, for acceptance, for words—desires that would follow him into adulthood. At five, Igor decided to become a writer, and his grandmother paid him a slice of cheese for every page he produced. He wrote Lenin and His Magical Goose, his first novel.In the late 1970s, world events changed Igor’s life. Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev made a deal: exchange tankers of grain for the safe passage of Soviet Jews to America—a country Igor viewed as the enemy. Along the way, Igor became Gary so that he would suffer one or two fewer beatings from other kids. Coming to the United States from the Soviet Union was equivalent to stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of pure Technicolor.Shteyngart’s loving but mismatched parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer or at least a “conscientious toiler” on Wall Street, something their distracted son was simply not cut out to do. Fusing English and Russian, his mother created the term Failurchka—Little Failure—which she applied to her son. With love. Mostly.As a result, Shteyngart operated on a theory that he would fail at everything he tried. At being a writer, at being a boyfriend, and, most important, at being a worthwhile human being.Swinging between a Soviet home life and American aspirations, Shteyngart found himself living in two contradictory worlds, all the while wishing that he could find a real home in one. And somebody to love him. And somebody to lend him sixty-nine cents for a McDonald’s hamburger.Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart’s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.

    Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they are revisited in on other centuries and other climes - by a Victorian spinster mourning her father, by an American astronaut on an obsessive personal mission. We journey to the Titanic, to the Amazon, to the raft of the Medusa, and to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin...This is no ordinary history, but something stranger, a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is the work of a brilliant novelist.

    But the witty writer was flabbergasted by the response when over 10,000 readers voted. "I have never written a column that got a bigger response than the one announcing the Bad Song Survey," Barry wrote. Based on the results of the survey, Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs is a compilation of some of the worst songs ever written. Dave Barry fans will relish his quirky take. Music buffs, too will appreciate this humorous stroll through the world's worst lyrics. The only thing wrong with this book is that readers will find themselves unable to stop mentally singing the greatest hits of Gary Puckett.

    Shepard chronicles his own life birth in Illinois, childhood memories of Guam, Pasadena and rural Southern California, adventures as ranch hand, waiter, rock musician, dramatist, and film actor. Scenes from this book form the basis of his play Superstitions, and of the film (directed by Wim Wenders) Paris, Texas, winner of the Golden Palm Award at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.