"In a haze of vape smoke on a rare windy night in LA in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then, Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she's had enough of the privileged bubble she's lived in--a bubble within a bubble--and that it's time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large. At home, she embarks on a 'Year of Self-Sufficiency'--learning...

"A no-holds-barred... look at the everyday life of the ultimate diva. Follow Joan on a family vacation in Mexico and on trips between New York and Los Angeles where she mingles with the stars, never missing a beat as she delivers blistering critiques on current events, and excoriating insights about life, pop culture, and celebrities (from A to D list), all in her... signature style"--Dust cover flap.

"A tour-de-force of comedy and reflection about the perilous journey from kindergarten to twelfth grade and beyond from the beloved stand-up comic and creator of The Great Depresh"--

From comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco—star of the film About My Father with Robert DeNiro—an inspiring, honest, uproarious collection of essays tracing his career from playing boxing rings and bowling alleys to reaching the pinnacles of comedy success.
At twenty-four, Sebastian Maniscalco arrived in LA with a suitcase and saved up minimum wages. He knew no one and nothing about standup comedy, but...

"You may know W. Kamau Bell from his new, Emmy-nominated hit show on CNN, United Shades of America. Or maybe you've read about him in the New York Times, which called him "the most promising new talent in political comedy in many years." Or maybe from The New Yorker, fawning over his brand of humor writing: "Bell's gimmick is intersectional progressivism: he treats racial, gay, and women's issues as inseparable." After all this love and praise, it's...

With fourteen HBO specials, five Grammys, a critical Supreme Court battle over censorship, and countless appearances on the international comedy circuit, George Carlin saw it all and made fun of most of it. Carlin's journey to stardom began in the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods of New York in the 1950s, where class and culture wars planted the seeds for some of his earliest material including the infamous Seven Dirty Words routine. Carlin describes...

"After bottoming out, being institutionalized, and getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: OK, so what else is out there? Over the ensuing decades, he found his way to the answer: a lot. From his current vantage point as a successful stand-up comic, Kasher looks back on his years careening from subculture to subculture, and he immerses readers in the hilariously strange nuances of each of the scenes he's...

Journalist and cultural critic James Sullivan tells the story of Alternative America from the 1950s to the present, from the singular vantage point of George Carlin, the Catholic boy for whom nothing was sacred. This critical biography is an insightful (and hilarious) examination of Carlin's body of work as it pertained to its cultural times and the man who created it, from his early days as a more-or-less conventional comedian to his stunning transformation...

Stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet and decrying the worst offenders. Here he gives his thoughts on all things culinary, including why he believes coconut water was invented to get people to stop drinking coconut water and why pretzel bread is #3 on his most important inventions of humankind.

"Negin Farsad is an Iranian-American-Muslim female stand-up comedian who believes she can change the world, one joke at a time. In HOW TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE LAUGH, Farsad shares her personal experiences growing up as the "Other" in an American culture that has no time for nuance. Writing bluntly and hilariously about the elements of race we are often too politically correct to discuss, Farsad takes a long hard look at the iconography that still shapes...