Humor

Attention would-be "paesans": Can't distinguish "gabagool" from "pasta fazool"? Not sure how to properly accessorize your track suit with gold chains? Does the phrase "go to the mattresses" make you sleepy? Now Steven R. Schirripa, "The Sopranos'" own Bobby Bacala, exposes the inner mysteries of this unique Italian-American hybrid in A Goomba's Guide to Life so that anyone can walk, talk, and live like a guy "from the neighborhood."
Uber-goomba Steve Schirripa shows how being a goomba made him what he is today, offering lessons learned on his own journey from Bensonhurst to Vegas, and to his current gig as Bobby Bacala on one of TV's most popular shows. Along the way, he shares secrets that will help you get in touch with your own inner goomba. You'll learn what music to enjoy (Sinatra, yes; Snoop Dogg, no), what movies to watch (Raging Bull, yes; Titanic, never), which sports to follow (baseball is good; golf and tennis, fuhgeddaboudit), and even tips on goomba etiquette. Ever wonder how a real goomba gets the best seat in the house? (Hint: It involves tipping, jewelry, and intimidation.) Schirripa even includes goomba do's and don'ts (never, ever criticize a goomba's mother or her gravy; always wear more jewelry than you think you need).
With knockout photographs of Schirripa and his compares, and insider information on how to think goomba, speak goomba, cook and eat goomba, and even how to behave at goomba weddings and funerals, A Goomba's Guide to Life will show any wiseguy wannabe how to sing like a Soprano.

All Women Are Bitches is a short, historically factual, very irreverent and slightly biased account of the relationships between women and men and their connection to religion. Although this is clearly meant to be a handbook for men, it is dedicated to all the beautiful women who inspired me to write it. I realize that many of you will understandably be quite upset with me and think that only an asshole would write a book with a title like this. You could be right about that, but please don't rush to judgment. Do you really think I spent all this time and effort to be known as the asshole who wrote a book? The contents might surprise you, and if you take the time to read the entire book, you may change your opinion. I'm actually very loveable. And ladies, if you do decide to read this handbook for men, there is a section near the end where I offer you some helpful advice that you may be able to use in the future. And don't get all negative on me before I even start; I'm not telling you what to do because I know better. I'm only offering advice. When I decided well over a year ago to write a book, I wasn't really sure what to write about. My initial thought was to come across as likeable and for the book to be entertaining, easy reading, and non-offensive. Obviously that didn't happen. Days went by and I had nothing, so I wrote this instead.

Fresh from her success with the best-selling "Bushworld," Maureen Dowd turns her sparkling prose and wise wit to a topic even more incendiary than presidential politics: sexual politics.
Four decades after the sexual revolution, nothing has worked out the way it was supposed to. The sexes are circling each other as uneasily and comically as ever, from the bedroom to the boardroom to the Situation Room, and now the "New York Times" columnist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for saucy and incisive commentary about the dangerous liaisons of Bill, Monica, Hillary and Ken Starr digs into the Y and X files, exploring the mysteries and muddles of sexual combat in America.
In a new book filled with chapters that surprise and amuse, Dowd explains why getting ready for a date went from glossing and gargling to Paxiling and Googling; why men are in an evolutionary and romantic shame spiral; why women have reeled backward in many ways; why men may be biologically unsuited to hold higher office, given their diva fits and catfights, teary confessions and fashion obsessions; why women are fixated on their looks more than ever, freezing their faces and emotions in an orgy of plasticity that makes the Stepford Wives look authentic; why male politicians and male institutions get tripped up in so much monkey business; why many alpha women, from Martha to Hillary, can have a successful second act only after becoming humiliated victims; and why the new definition of Having It All is less about empowerment and equality than about flirting and getting rescued, downshifting from "You go, girl!" to "You go lie down, girl."
In addition, Dowd, who has reported on historic moments on the sexual battlefield, from Geraldine Ferraro's vice-presidential run to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings to Hillary Rodham Clinton's reign as copresident, explores not only how many of these shining feminist triumphs backfired on women but also how Hillary, a feminist icon busy plotting her campaign to be the first woman president, delivered the final blow to female solidarity herself.
Women's liberation has been less a steady trajectory than a confusing zigzag. Feminism lasted for a nanosecond and generated a gender tangle that has bewitched, bothered and bewildered men and women for forty years. Now comes a woman to cut through the tangle and tickle Adam's rib. The battle of the sexes will never be the same.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the hilarious "Bloom County" comic strip is back! To help celebrate, here is the first ever Bloom County picture book, featuring fan-favorite Bill the Cat in an origin story. (Ack ack!) The perfect gift for Bloomers old and new.

An Amazon Best Book of the Year and NY Times bestseller!

Almost thirty-five years ago Berkeley Breathed launched a little-known yet laugh-inducing comic strip called "Bloom County" that was full of characters who instantly entered the public consciousness--none more so than Opus (the penguin) and Bill the Cat. Bloom County's popularity soared, it was soon syndicated nationally, had millions of daily readers, and before long its creator was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Then, nine years later, "Bloom County" sadly came to a close. It had simply ceased being fun for Berkeley Breathed.

Now, more than twenty-five years after it ended, "Bloom County" has returned in full force and humor online, with an ever-growing fanbase every bit as zealous as it was in the strip's heyday. For the comic's youngest fans, and for those who never stopped wishing for its return, here is an all-new, kid-friendly story for anyone who ever wanted to know the origin story of Bill the Cat. "Bloom County" has never been more fun!

Praise for The Bill the Cat Story

"The illustrations, a mixture of cartoons, eye-popping virtual paintings, and pencil sketches, will pull inquisitive audiences of all ages into the story."--Booklist

"[E]xtravagantly rendered artwork in luscious color."--Publishers Weekly

The blowhard-skewering saga continues, with all-new, never-before-printed strips featuring everyone's favorite penguin and all the other quirky denizens of the magical land called Bloom County.

This second volume from the strip's 2015 relaunch follows just a year after Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope, but, boy, have things changed. It seems like we need Opus, Bill, and the gang now more than ever. Filled with biting, hilarious, and all-too necessary political insight from one of America's most celebrated cartoonists, a Brand Spanking New Day is just what the doctor ordered.

David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.

If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong.

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet--and it just might be his very best.

Cartoon Success Secrets offers a veritable comics college education on how to succeed as a cartoonist. It features insider's perspectives from 20 top cartoonists, whose comic strips such as Zits, Garfield, Cathy, and For Better or For Worse appear in at least a thousand newspapers every day.

Author Jud Hurd caught the cartooning bug more than three quarters of a century ago, and at age 90 he's still not cured. Now, in Cartoon Success Secrets, the editor of the cartooning industry's leading insider magazine, CARTOONIST PROfiles, shares the colorful stories and sage advice of his cartoonist colleagues.

Through his personal encounters with virtually every cartoonist legend of the last four decades, Hurd amassed countless insights from the world's best cartoonists on how they rose to the top of their field. Now, for the first time ever, he shares his early conversations with such famous cartoonists as Walt Disney, Rube Goldberg, H. T. Webster, George McManus, Frederick Opper, and countless others who succeeded in selling their creations to major syndicates and attaining their cartooning aspirations. Their words will inspire all who have dreamed of becoming a famous cartoonist.

Many books have profiled cartooning legends, but never before has a book compiled detailed advice from these creators on how they achieved their success. Cartoon Success Secrets is sure to fascinate cartoon enthusiasts the world over, from fledgling cartoonists looking to break into the industry to fans of the funny pages wanting to know how their favorite artists made it big.

The book that Janet Maslin of The New York Times has called "indispensable" and "a transfixing study of American mores and manners that happens to incorporate boundless laughs, too" is finally available in paperback--fully updated and featuring a brand new introduction by Adam Gopnik.

Organized by decade, with commentary by some of the magazine's finest writers, this landmark collection showcases the work of the hundreds of talented artists who have contributed cartoons over the course ofThe New Yorker's eight-two-year history. From the early cartoons of Peter Arno, George Price and Charles Addams to the cutting-edge work of Alex Gregory, Matthew Diffee and Bruce Eric Kaplan (with stops along the way for the genius of Charles Barsotti, Roz Chast, Jack Ziegler, George Booth, and many others), the art collected here forms, as David Remnick puts it in his Foreword, "the longest-running popular comic genre in American life."

Throughout the book, brief overviews of each era's predominant themes--from the Depression and nudity to technology and the Internet, highlight various genres of cartoons and shed light on our pastimes and preoccupations. Brief profiles and mini-portfolios spotlight the work of key cartoonists, including Arno, Chast, Ziegler, and others.

The DVD-ROM included with the book is what really makes the "Complete Cartoons" complete. Compatible with most home computers and easily browsable, the disk contains a mind-boggling 70,363 cartoons, indexed in a variety of ways. Perhaps you'd like to find all the cartoons by your favorite artist. Or maybe you'd like to look up the cartoons that ran the week you were born, or all of the cartoons on a particular subject. Of course, you can always begin at the beginning, February 21, 1925, and experience the unprecedented pleasure of reading through every single cartoon ever published in The New Yorker.

Enjoy this one-of-a-kind protrait of American life over the past eight decades, as captured by the talented pens and singular outlooks of the masters of the cartoonist's art.

Cubicle-dwelling business people the world over have been knowingly nodding, faithfully push-pinning their favorite strips to their cube walls, and--most of all--belly laughing out loud ever since Dilbert first arrived on the scene. In this collection, Excuse Me While I Wag, Dilbert and his look-alike dog, Dogbert, once again provide comic relief to anyone who has ever had to inhabit a cubicle, endure an "initiative of the week," or simply work in an office that has, on occasion, caused them to pull out large clumps of their hair. Scott Adams' dead-on humor in Excuse Me While I Wag is sure to satisfy the hordes of fans worldwide who avidly follow the misadventures of Dilbert, Dogbert, Catbert, Ratbert, the pointy-haired boss, and the rest of the cast of characters in Dilbert's world--a world that's eerily like the one we work in daily.

Ayun Halliday's fourth book, Dirty Sugar Cookies, takes readers into the unpredictable mind and comical experiences of a true anti-foodie, giving even the most hopeless cooks a moment of relief from self-criticism, and the least discriminating eaters a reality check. Halliday started out a repressed picky eater without so much as a single fast-food-loving sibling to save her from the gourmet ambitions of a mother whose recipe for Far East Celery once received favorable mention in the Indianapolis Star. Her palate has since expanded to the degree that she'll fork down anything from chili-smothered insects that pass for an exotic destination's local delicacies to a peanut found wedged between the cushions of a theater seat.
From summer camp's unlimited Pop-Tarts to the post-coital breakfasts of a well-traveled actress-waitress and the frustrating payback of cooking for some finicky offspring of the author's own, Dirty Sugar Cookies is an omnivorous, hilarious chronicle of culinary awakening.

The creator of "Dilbert," the fastest-growing comic strip in America (syndicated in more than 900 newspapers and read by more than 60 million people), presents a hilariously biting compilation of cartoons that expose the absurdities of corporate management. Dilbert is sweeping the nation. "The San Francisco Chronicle" dubbed him "the cartoon hero of the workplace, " saying that the strip "has its finger on the pulse of the '90s white-collar workplace." Now online, it is one of the hottest Web sites on the Internet, and more than a million copies of the "Dilbert" cartoon books have been sold.

In this latest cartoon compilation, Dilbert's canine sidekick, the Machiavellian Dogbert, presents a breakthrough management manual to help bosses stick it to their employees. All too often, new managers make mistakes like rewarding good work with good pay, communicating clearly and improving departmental efficiency. Dogbert shows that this could have devastating results: Employees begin to expect fair treatment and compensation, productive workers show results (making the managers look bad by comparison) and the department's future budget allotment could be decreased because it spends only what it needs.

Drawn from years of experience tormenting Dilbert and advising his boss, "Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook" uses pithy essays, whose points are illustrated with hundreds of comic strips, to drive home the lost cause of the employee in the workplace. It is the perfect gift for bosses and office workers everywhere."[Adams] turns the powerful searchlight of his intelligence on management, seeking its very essence. Think of him as Peter Drucker with fleas." "--Fortune"

"I am nowconvinced 98% of the managers I've worked for have read this book and taken Dogbert's advice." "--USA Today"

Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse is a satirical poetry collection from award-winning actor and bestselling author John Lithgow. Chronicling the last few raucous years in American politics, Lithgow takes readers verse by verse through the history of Donald Trump's presidency.

- Lampoons the likes of Betsy DeVos, William Barr, Rudy Giuliani, and dozens more.
- Illustrated from cover to cover with Lithgow's never-before-seen line drawings.
- Draws inspiration from A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and even Mother Goose.
- Great for fans of A Very Stable Genius by Mike Luckovich, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter by Scott Adams, and The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

The poems collected in Dumpty draw inspiration from A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mother Goose, and many more.

A feat of laugh-out-loud lyrical storytelling, this timely volume is bound to bring joy to poetry lovers, political junkies, and Lithgow fans alike.

From Emmy Award-winning, world-famous magician Penn Jillette comes an irreverent, hilarious, and provocative book of essays--the perfect gift for the skeptic in your life.

Let's be honest--nobody has more fun than atheists. Don't believe it? Well, consider this: For non-believers, every day you're alive is a day to celebrate! And no one celebrates life to the fullest like Penn Jillette, the larger, louder half of legendary magic duo Penn & Teller, whose spectacularly witty and sharply observant essays in Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday! will entertain zealots and skeptics alike.

Whether he's contemplating the possibility of life after death, deconstructing popular Christmas carols, or just calling bullsh*t on Donald Trump, Jillette does not fail to shock and delight his readers. And as ever, underneath these rollicking rants lie a deeply personal philosophy and a generous spirit, which find joy and meaning in family, and peace in the simple beauty of the everyday. Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday! is a hysterical affirmation of life's magic from one of the most distinctly perceptive and provocative humorists writing today.

Calvin Trillin begins his wise and charming ruminations on family by stating the sum total of his child-rearing advice: "Try to get one that doesn't spit up. Otherwise, you're on your own." Suspicious of any child-rearing theories beyond "Your children are either the center of your life or they're not, " Trillin has clearly reveled in the role of family man -- writing songs like "Uncle Max's Kids Are Gross, Creepy, Dumb and Yucky" for family movie musicals, marching in the local Halloween parade in his favorite ax murderer's mask even after his daughters had grown up and moved away, changing diapers in the knowledge that otherwise he might be robbing himself of the opportunity to say, during a stressful family conversation 15 or 20 years down the road, "I changed your diapers!" Acknowledging the special perils to the privacy of people living with a writer who occasionally remarks, "I hope you're not under the impression that what you just said was off the record, " Trillin deals with the subject of family in a way that is loving, honest, and wildly funny.

Sure, everyone does it; but everyone tries to hide it a little differently. Farts: A Spotter's Guide will help you pinpoint he (or she) who dealt it every time. This hilarious book identifies the habitat, range, voice, and "field marks" of tencommon wind breakers, from the gentle hiss of the Silent-but-Deadly to the rip-roaring flatulation of the Seismic Blast. The attached battery powered fart machine reproduces each emanation in accurate sound. Grossly hip illustrations by the Fudge Factory'syes, you read that rightTravis Millard depict the offenders and offendees in brilliant detail. Printed on durable card stock, this is pure, unbridled entertainment for the giggling child in all of us. Let 'er rip!

The most-listened-to radio personality in the country is back with another collection of winning stories. Based on the popular For What It's Worth feature of Harvey's daily broadcast, this witty, whimsical volume gathers the best of those strange, funny and downright irresistible news items culled from papers coast-to-coast.

Like every great lasagna, Garfield was born in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant on a winter's night in 1978, while outside snow fell like grated Parmesan cheese. He weighed five pounds, six ounces at birth--that's big for a kitten!--and right from the start showed a passion for Italian food. The restaurant owner, forced to choose between Garfield and closing his doors for lack of pasta, sold Garfield to a pet store. Garfield thought he was a goner until Jon Arbuckle walked in the door.

The rest is history.

Jim Norton is a pervert

in the truest sense of the word. The physical equivalent of a tall slug, he pays top dollar for massages with happy endings and is fascinated by shitty sitcoms and fat girls. He is also, at times, racially offensive and morally repugnant. He spares no one in his comedy -- least of all himself.

Now, in this outrageous, blisteringly funny collection of essays, Norton tackles the topics that are near and dear to his heart: from public events like the legendary Voyeur Bus incident on the Opie and Anthony Show, which culminated in all involved being taken to jail, or seeking a hug from his childhood idol Gene Simmons, to deeply private moments, including a teenage Jim's embarrassing poetry-writing attempts while in rehab, and his inexpensive sexual experience with an unwashed MILF (a Monolith I'd Like to Forget). His stories are raw, searingly honest in their attention to detail, and most of all, hilarious.

Filled with personal photos and nearly fifty candid and uncompromising essays, Happy Endings is one of a kind...and probably best read on an empty stomach.

If I could turn back
Time, I'd look just like Cher did
Before surgery.

In Hot Flash Haiku, you'll find 200 funny and frank, punny and profound poems designed to delight women of a certain age. Hot flashers Jennifer Basye Sander and Paula Munier have divided this hilarious and moving collection by the five stages of grief, alternately laughing and lamenting about such ageless topics like love, sex, children, death, taxes, and life in general on the far side of forty.

Hot Flash Haiku: Because you're hot and you know it!