Funny Business, the first volume in Jon Scieszka's Guys Read Library of Great Reading, features ten short stories guaranteed to delight, amuse, and possibly make you spit your milk in your friend's face. There's something for everyone in this collection of short stories from some of the funniest writers around. This hilarious, offbeat first installment in the Guys Read Library is 100% grade-A humor, guaranteed to have kids of all ages asking for more. Authors include Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo & Jon Scieszka, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Adam Rex, and David Yoo, with illustrations by Adam Rex.
“A delightful and entertaining book about one of America’s greatest humorists.”—Seth Meyers This “absorbing, illuminating” (Jon Meacham) biography of the legendary political humorist reveals the life behind his must-read Washington Post columns, featuring never-before-published photos, documents, and interviews. Before Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Doonesbury, there was Art Buchwald. For more than fifty years, from 1949 to 2006, Art Buchwald’s Pulitzer Prize–winning column of political satire and biting wit made him one of the most widely read American humorists and a popular player in the Washington world of Ethel and Ted Kennedy, Ben Bradlee, and Katharine Graham. Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State, called Buchwald the “greatest satirist in the English language since Pope and Swift.” Drawing on Buchwald’s most memorable columns and unpublished correspondence with other famous people, Funny Business shows how Art Buchwald became an American original. Like Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, and James Thurber, he satirized political scoundrels, lampooned the powerful, and “worshipped the quicksand” that ten presidents walked on, as Buchwald joked. “The key to Buchwald’s style of humor, he once stated, was to “treat light subjects seriously and serious subjects lightly.” But there was a darker, more serious side to Art Buchwald. A childhood spent in foster homes taught him to see comedy as a refuge. Buchwald also struggled with depression, a secret he kept from the public for nearly thirty years. This revealing book is studded with stories of Buchwald’s friendships with Humphrey Bogart, John Steinbeck, Irwin Shaw, William Styron, Erma Bombeck, Frank Sinatra, Adam West ("Batman"), Robert Frost, and others. Throughout his career, Buchwald wrote about such historical events as the Vietnam War, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Watergate, and the 9/11 terrorist attack. Featured here are stories of Buchwald’s nonstop one-liners, known in his day as “Buchshots.” Entertaining and absorbing, Funny Business looks back on Buchwald’s brilliant gift for humor and satire, which will once again bring readers a comedic respite from troublesome times.
Public speaking can be terrifying. For David Nihill, the idea of standing in front of an audience was scarier than cliff jumping into a thorny pit of spiders and mothers-in-law. Without a parachute or advanced weaponry. Something had to change. In what doesn't sound like the best plan ever, David decided to overcome his fears by pretending to be an accomplished comedian called "Irish Dave" for one full year, crashing as many comedy clubs, festivals, and shows as possible. One part of the plan was at least logical: he was already Irish and already called Dave. In one year, David went from being deathly afraid of public speaking to hosting a business conference, regularly performing stand-up comedy and winning storytelling competitions in front of packed houses. And he did it by learning from some of the best public speakers in the world: stand-up comedians. Do You Talk Funny?: 7 Comedy Habits to Become a Better (and Funnier) Public Speaker shows how the key principles of stand-up comedy can be applied to your speaking engagements and presentations to make you funnier, more interesting, and better looking. (Or at least two of the three.) Whether you are preparing for a business presentation, giving a wedding toast, defending your thesis, raising money from investors, or simply want to take on something you're afraid of, this book will take you from sweaty to stage-ready. You'll learn how to: - Craft a story and content that your audience will want to listen to - Find the funniest parts of your material and how to get to them faster - Deal with stage fright - Master the two most important parts of your performance: timing and delivery Ten percent of the author's proceeds from this book will go to Arash Bayatmakou via Help Hope Live until he is fully back on his feet and thereafter to one of the many facing the same challenges after suffering a severe spinal cord injury.
A famous ad for Levy's Jewish Rye Bread showed an African-American kid, smiling after biting a deli sandwich obviously made with their product. The headline read: You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's. And you don't have to be in advertising (or even in business) to love these laugh-out-loud stories, a result of Allen Rosenshine's nearly 45 years in advertising. The moguls he's known--many of America's most recognizable captains of industry--appear in scenes uncustomary to any corporate boardroom. The mobsters he's dealt with come off as characters far more comic than threatening. The megastars he's met, from presidents to pop artists to pro athletes, are captured here as no camera has ever seen them. When these crowds mixed with the madcap world of Madison Avenue, it was never business as usual. Funny Business is funny, it's about business, but more than that, it's about being human. It's about all of us--the only creatures on earth that can really laugh, most meaningfully at ourselves.
From the most popular routines and the most ingenious physical shtick to the snappiest wisecracks and the most biting satire of the last century, Make 'Em Laugh illuminates who we are as a nation by exploring what makes us laugh, and why. Authors Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor draw on countless sources to chronicle the past century of American comedy and the geniuses who created and performed it-melding biography, American history, and a lotta laughs into an exuberant, important book. Each of the six chapters focuses a different style or archetype of comedy, from the slapstick pratfalls of Buster Keaton and Lucille Ball through the wiseguy put-downs of Groucho Marx and Larry David, to the incendiary bombshells of Mae West and Richard Pryor . And at every turn the significance of these comedians-smashing social boundaries, challenging the definition of good taste, speaking the truth to the powerful-is vividly tangible. Make 'Em Laugh is more than a compendium of American comic genius; it is a window onto the way comedy both reflects the world and changes it-one laugh at a time. Starting from the groundbreaking PBS series, the authors have gone deeper into the works and lives of America's great comic artists, with biographical portraits, archival materials, cultural overviews, and rare photos. Brilliantly illustrated, with insights (and jokes) from comedians, writers and producers, along with film, radio, television, and theater historians, Make 'Em Laugh is an indispensible, definitive book about comedy in America.
Twenty-two one-act plays and sketches demonstrating comedy techniques. Comedy relies upon exaggeration incongruity, automatism, character inconsistency, surprise and derision. Now a book that defines and demonstrates each of these devices with twenty-two short sketches and one-act plays.
