Getting Even, a collection of his late '60s magazine pieces, offers a look into Allen's bag of shtick, back when it was new. From the supposed memoirs of Hitler's barber: "Then, in January of '45, a plot by several generals to shave Hitler's moustache in his sleep failed when von Stauffenberg, in the darkness of Hitler's bedroom, shaved off one of the Führer's eyebrows instead..." Even tho the idea of writing jokes about old Adolf--or addled rabbis, or Maatjes herring--isn't nearly as fresh as it used to be, Getting Even still delivers plenty of laughs. At his best, Woody can achieve a level of transcendent craziness that no other writer can match. If you're looking for a book to dip into at random, or a gift for someone who's seen Sleeper 13 times, Getting Even is a classic, with 316,000 copies sold to date.

    The compilation is anchored by more of Collins’s short stories, which, striking and powerful in their brevity, reveal the ways in which relationships are both formed and come undone. Also collected here is the work Collins wrote for the screen and stage: the screenplay of her film Losing Ground, in which a professor discovers that the student film she’s agreed to act in has uncomfortable parallels to her own life; and the script for The Brothers, a play about the potent effects of sexism and racism on a midcentury middle-class black family. And finally, it is in Collins’s raw and prescient diaries that her nascent ideas about race, gender, marriage, and motherhood first play out on the page.Kathleen Collins’s writing brings to life vibrant characters whose quotidian concerns powerfully illuminate the particular joys, challenges, and heartbreaks rendered by the African-American experience. By turns empowering, exuberant, sexy, and poignant, Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary is a brilliant compendium of an inimitable talent, and a rich portrait of a writer hard at work.

    He has been a busy man. Yet, for the last two years, he has also managed to squeeze in a weekly column for The Times. Without fail, he sat down every week and wracked his brain to think of something to write 900 words about. Dispatches From the Sofa is the brilliant result. Alighting on such random topics as the potential demise of Margaret Thatcher, the love-hate relationship with your football club, Mike Read's musical of Oscar Wilde, fat pop stars, Serbian breakfast banter, the pleasures of air-guitar, the banking crisis and the evil phenomenon of Jedward, this is a thought-provoking, wide-reaching, hilarious and self-deprecating collection - which also includes the first two chapters from his unpublished novel - from one of our funniest, quickest and most beloved comedians.

    He also talked a fair amount about mayonnaise. The interview was conducted by Mara Altman, the author of four bestselling Kindle Singles including “Baby Steps” and “Bearded Lady.” Altman has worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice, and has also written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman's first book, “Thanks For Coming: A Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm,” which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. Cover design by Adil Dara Kim.

    Shiksa Goddess collects thirty-five of her urbane, inspiring, and deeply empathic essays–all written when she was in her forties, and all infused with her trademark irreverent humor.The full range of Wasserstein’s mid-life obsessions are covered in this eclectic collection: everything from Chekhov, politics, and celebrity, to family, fashion, and real estate. Whether fretting over her figure, discovering her gentile roots, proclaiming her love for ordered-in breakfasts, lobbying for affordable theater, or writing tenderly about her very Jewish mother and her own daughter, born when she was forty-eight and single, Wasserstein reveals the full, dizzying life of a shiksa goddess with unabashed candor and inimitable style.Shiksa goddess --A place they'd never seen: the theater --Hillary Clinton's muddled legacy --The forty-eight-hour turnaround --How suite it is --The LUMP list --She saw through us --First ladies get dressed --Good, better, Bette --Diary --Three sisters --Afternoon of a fan --How to do a Hollywood awards ceremony --Don't tell workshop --Wendy's workshop --The holiday chronicles --My low-fat dinner with Jamie Lee Curtis --Jill's adventures in real estate: or, I can get it for you at 3.2 --Women beware women --Designing men --The muse that mewed --Heidi chronicled --The me I'd like to be --Mom says every day is Mother's Day --Waif goodbye, hello bulge --Making nice: when is enough enough? --The state of the arts --Dear Broadway, this isn't really goodbye --Poles apart --Ah, that first feast in wild Manhattan --New York theater: isn't it romantic --Directing 101: George Abbott on what works --Theater problems? Call Dr. Chekhov --How I spent my forties --Days of awe: the birth of Lucy Jane

    Vollmann is one of our greatest living writers. Masterworks such as You Bright and Risen Angels, The Royal Family, and Rising Up and Rising Down—his latest work, a stunning 3,300-page tour-de-force—have launched him into the literary stratosphere. He stands today as one of America's leading contenders for a future Nobel Prize in literature. Here is his long-awaited "best-of" collection, intended both as an introduction for the curious reader, and as a necessary addition to the existing fan's collection. With excerpts from all of Vollmann's novels (including several not yet published), journalistic pieces, essays, correspondence, and poetry, Expelled from Eden creates a unique, kaleidoscopic portrait of one of America's most notorious, protean, devastating, and necessary writers.

    Banks learns that one of the young men he has seen occasionally about the house is about to become his son-in-law. Daughter Kay announces the engagement out of nowhere. Mrs. Banks and her sons are happy, but Mr. Banks is in a dither. The groom-to-be, Buckley Dunstan, appears on the scene and Mr. Banks realizes that the engagement is serious. Buckley and Kay don't want a "big" wedding just a simple affair with a few friends! We soon learn, however, that the "few" friends idea is out. Then trouble really begins. The guest list grows larger each day, a caterer is called in, florists, furniture movers and dressmakers take over, and the Banks household is soon caught in turmoil.

    Includes Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? For four decades, George Carlin has been one of America's favorite comics, known as much for his willingness to take on taboo subjects as for his absurdist wordplay. As an author, he has proved equally popular: With combined sales of more than two million copies, Carlin's three books of razor-sharp and hilarious observations have topped bestseller lists nationwide. Now, for the first time as an ebook, Hachette Books proudly collects all three volumes--When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, Napalm and Silly Putty, and Brain Droppings--into one hilarious omnibus.

    As the teachers struggle daily to nurture and groom, the students prefer to hang out and “chillax”. With upskirting and Facebooking, griping and politicking, school takes on a whole new meaning as the colourful characters struggle to prove that those who can, teach.Written by Singapore’s most prolific playwright Haresh Sharma, Those Who Can’t, Teach was first staged by The Necessary Stage in 1990 to critical acclaim. Twenty years later, Sharma revisits this classic to revitalise it for the Singapore Arts Festival 2010, transforming it into a powerful portrayal of the pressures and challenges facing teachers (and students) in schools in the 21st century.“The play throws up questions on the roles of parents, students and teachers, but does not collapse into an impotent tirade against society. The script is joyous. The laughter is warmly wry, not caustic.” —The Straits Times“Those Who Can’t, Teach does much to do away with the stereotypes and fallacies of the teaching profession.” —The Business Times

    A core book for any golfer--how to read a golf course, through the eyes of a course architect.

    In this single, from n+1 (Issue 12), Kent Russell gives a remarkable (and very funny) report on the festival and a sympathetic account of the situation of the white poor in the US.

    Clarence Day's reminiscences of growing up in a turn-of-the-century New York household which keeps wriggling out from under the thumb of a blustering Wall Street paterfamilias are classics of American humor, lively and nostalgic sketches that still manage to evoke the enduring comedy of family life. Father's explosive encounters with horse and cook, servants and shopkeepers, wife and children—to say nothing of his vigorous pursuit of ice!—retain their hilarious appeal in no small part because the younger Day never seems put out by the older man's actions, never describes him with less than affectionate amusement. As a result, Life with Father remains as a contemporary critic described it: "A delightful book alive with energy and collisions and the running water of happiness."A bestseller when it was first published in 1935, Life with Father was the inspiration for one of the longest-running hits in Broadway history and was later adapted successfully for both film and television.Clarence Day was born in 1874. After graduation from Yale, he followed his father to Wall Street, but his business career was cut short by illness. Turning to writing and drawing, he became an early contributor to The New Yorker and authored several books, the most famous of which was Life with Father. Day died in December 1935, just a few months after Life with Father was published. Life with Mother appeared posthumously."A delightful book alive with energy and collisions and the running water of happiness."—The New Republic"One of the most chuckling books of our time."—The Atlantic"The only reason for reading Life with Father is the fun of it."—New York Times"Such a rich and rounded character as Father has not appeared in literature for many a year. A novelist would be ranked as a genius for inventing him; Clarence Day didn't need to."Books"It won't be so much fun reading Life with Father unless you have someone at hand to whom you can read snatches whenever enjoyment becomes too great to be self-contained any longer."—Boston Transcript

    Lyrical, intense, and particular, flouting taboos and self-censorship, this acclaimed memoir explores the spaces that have shaped a life, including the "bone house" of her body.

    His career has spanned more than half a century, his lyrics have become synonymous with musical theater and popular culture, and in Finishing the Hat—titled after perhaps his most autobiographical song, from Sunday in the Park with George—Sondheim has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he is giving readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions.Along with the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981—including West Side Story, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd—Sondheim treats us to never-before-published songs from each show, songs that were cut or discarded before seeing the light of day. He discusses his relationship with his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, and his collaborations with extraordinary talents such as Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Angela Lansbury, Harold Prince and a panoply of others. The anecdotes—filled with history, pointed observations and intimate details—transport us back to a time when theater was a major pillar of American culture. Best of all, Sondheim appraises his work and dissects his lyrics, as well as those of others, offering unparalleled insights into songwriting that will be studied by fans and aspiring songwriters for years to come. Accompanying Sondheim’s sparkling writing are behind-the-scenes photographs from each production, along with handwritten music and lyrics from the songwriter’s personal collection. Penetrating and surprising, poignant, funny and sometimes provocative, Finishing the Hat is not only an informative look at the art and craft of lyric writing, it is a history of the theater that belongs on the same literary shelf as Moss Hart’s Act One and Arthur Miller’s Timebends. It is also a book that will leave you humming the final bars of Merrily We Roll Along, while eagerly anticipating the next volume, which begins with the opening lines of Sunday in the Park with George.

    Murrow's radio program, This I Believe, gave voice to the feelings and treasured beliefs of Americans around the country. Fifty years later, the popular update of the series, which now continues on Bob Edwards Weekend on public radio, explores the beliefs that people hold dear today. This book brings together essays on love from ordinary people far and wide whose sentiments and stories will surprise, inspire, and move you.Includes extraordinary essays written by ordinary Americans on love in its many manifestations-from romantic love and love of family to love of place and love of animals Paints a compelling portrait of the diverse range of beliefs and experiences related to what is perhaps the most powerful and complex of human emotions-love Based on the popular This I Believe radio series and thisibelieve.org Web site By turns funny and profound, yet always engaging, This I Believe: On Love is a perfect gift to give or to keep.