Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes
Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes

Author: Jim Holt

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2008-07-17

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0393069443

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“Finally I understand what it is I’ve been laughing at all these years.”—Jimmy Kimmel From the best-selling author of Why Does the World Exist? comes this outrageous, uproarious compendium of absurdity, filth, racy paradox, and gratuitous offensiveness—just the kind of mature philosophical reflection readers have come to expect from the ever-entertaining Jim Holt. Indeed, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This is the first book to trace the evolution of the joke all the way from the standup comics of ancient Athens to the comedy-club Seinfelds of today. After exploring humor’s history in Part One, Holt delves into philosophy in Part Two: Wall Street jokes; jokes about rednecks and atheists, bulimics and politicians; jokes you missed if you didn’t go to a Catholic girls’ school; jokes about logic and existence itself . . . all became fodder for the grand theories of Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Wittgenstein in this heady mix of the high and low, of the ribald and profound, from America’s most beloved philosophical pundit.

Mumbai New York Scranton
Mumbai New York Scranton

Author: Tamara Shopsin

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1451687435

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An extraordinarily moving memoir from an iconoclastic new talent—an artist, cook, and illustrator whose adventures at home and abroad reveal the importance of living life with your eyes wide open. Best known for her witty illustrations, and as a cook beside her mischievous father in her family’s legendary Manhattan restaurant, in Mumbai New York Scranton, Tamara Shopsin offers a brilliantly inventive, spare, and elegant chronicle of a year in her life characterized by impermanence. In a refreshingly original voice alternating between tender and brazen, Shopsin recounts a trip to the Far East with her sidekick husband and the harrowing adventure that unfolds when she comes home. Entire worlds, deep relationships, and indelible experiences are portrayed in Shopsin’s deceptively simple and sparse language and drawings. Blending humor, love, suspense—and featuring photographs by Jason Fulford—Mumbai New York Scranton inspires a kaleidoscope of emotions. Shopsin’s surprising and affecting tale will keep you on the edge of your seat.

The Pun Also Rises
The Pun Also Rises

Author: John Pollack

Publisher: Avery

Published: 2012-04-03

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1592406750

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At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book is a funny, erudite, and provocative exploration of puns, the people who make them, and this derided wordplay's remarkable impact on human history.

The Importance of Being Funny
The Importance of Being Funny

Author: Al Gini

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-07-25

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1442281774

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When E. B. White said “analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies,” he hadn’t seen Al Gini’s hilarious, incisive, and informative take on jokes, joke-telling, and the jokers who tell jokes. For Gini, humor is more than just foolish fun: it serves as a safety valve for dealing with reality that gives us the courage to endure that which we cannot understand or avoid. Not everyone tells jokes. Not everyone gets a joke, even a good one. But, Gini argues, joke-telling can act as both a sword and a shield to defend us from reality. As the late, great stand-up comic Joan Rivers put it: ‘If you can laugh at it, you can live with it!’ This book is for anyone who enjoys a good laugh, but also wants to know why.

Read On...History
Read On...History

Author: Tina Frolund

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-10-21

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1610694325

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Make history come alive! This book helps librarians and teachers as well as readers themselves find books they will enjoy—titles that will animate and explain the past, entertain, and expand their minds. This invaluable resource offers reading lists of contemporary and classic non-fiction history books and historical fiction, covering all time periods throughout the world, and including practically all manner of human endeavors. Every book included is hand-selected as an entertaining and enlightening read! Organized by appeal characteristics, this book will help readers zero in on the history books they will like best—for instance, titles that emphasize character, tell a specific type of historical story, convey a mood, or are presented in a particular setting. Every book listed has been recommended based on the author's research, and has proved to be a satisfying and worthwhile read.

You've Got To Be Kidding!
You've Got To Be Kidding!

Author: John Capps

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1444356208

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You've Got to Be Kidding!: How Jokes Can Help You Think is a thoughtful and accessible analysis of the ways in which jokes illustrate how we think critically, and how the thinking process goes awry in everyday human situations. Uses jokes to illustrate the various mistakes or fallacies that are typically identified and discussed in courses on critical reasoning Provides an effective way to learn critical thinking skills since jokes often describe real-life situations where it really matters whether a person thinks well or not Demonstrates how philosophy is actually very practical and clearly related to real- life human experiences Explains how developing good reasoning habits can make a real difference in all aspects of one's life

Kant’s Humorous Writings
Kant’s Humorous Writings

Author: Robert R. Clewis

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-11-12

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1350112771

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While Kant is commonly regarded as one of the most austere philosophers of all time, this book provides quite a different perspective of the founder of transcendental philosophy. Kant is often thought of as being boring, methodical, and humorless. Yet the thirty jokes and anecdotes collected and illustrated here for the first time reveal a man and a thinker who was deeply interested in how humor and laughter shape how we think, feel, and communicate with fellow human beings. In addition to a foreword on Kant's theory of humor by Noël Carroll as well as Clewis's informative chapters, Kant's Humorous Writings contains new translations of Kant's jokes, quips, and anecdotes. Each of the thirty excerpts is illustrated and supplemented by historical commentaries which explain their significance.

Vintage Tomorrows
Vintage Tomorrows

Author: James Carrott

Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

Published: 2013-01-15

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 1449337996

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Can you imagine what today’s technology would have looked like in the Victorian Era? That’s the world Steampunk envisions: a mad-inventor collection of 21st Century-inspired contraptions powered by stream and driven by gears. It’s more than just a whimsical idea. In the past few years, the Steampunk genre has captivated makers, hackers, artists, designers, writers, and others throughout the world. In this fascinating book, futurist Brian David Johnson and cultural historian James Carrott offer insights into what Steampunk’s alternative history says about our own world and its technological future. Interviews with experts such as William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, James Gleick, and Margaret Atwood explore how this vision of stylish craftsmen making fantastic and beautiful hand-tooled gadgets has become a cultural movement—and perhaps an important countercultural moment. Steampunk is everywhere—as gadget prototypes at Maker Faire, novels and comic books, paintings and photography, sculptures, fashion design, and music. Discover how this elaborate view of a future that never existed can help us look forward.

Problems of Living
Problems of Living

Author: Dan J. Stein

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0323904394

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Problems of Living: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Cognitive-Affective Science addresses philosophical questions related to problems of living, including questions about the nature of the brain-mind, reason and emotion, happiness and suffering, goodness and truth, and the meaning of life. It draws on critical, pragmatic, and embodied realism as well as moral naturalism, and brings arguments from metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics together with data from cognitive-affective science. This multidisciplinary integrated approach provides a novel framework for considering not only the nature of mental disorders, but also broader issues in mental health, such as finding pleasure and purpose in life. Draws on the strongest aspects of polar positions in philosophy and psychiatry to help resolve important perennial debates in these fields Explores continuities between early philosophical work and current cognitive-affective sciences, including neuroscience and psychology Employs findings from modern cognitive-affective science to rethink key long-standing debates in philosophy and psychiatry Builds on work showing how mind is embodied in the brain, and embedded in society, to provide an integrated conceptual framework Assesses both the insights and the limitations of cognitive-affective science for addressing the big questions and hard problems of living