Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Comedy & Humor

More than once, friends of Carl Reiner said, “You ought to write those things down.” And at the age of eighty, Carl finally did. In this funny and engaging memoir, Reiner recounts his show business life in short comic takes....

Conspiracy buff or not, who can resist a book that blows the lid off some of our time's most controversial issues? For example, if astronauts, pilots, and nearly every culture since time immemorial believe UFOs exists, why does the U.S. government deny it? And just how could the President of the United States die of a frontal would inflicted by a sniper shooting from behind?

When Dave Barry writes funny, you write back. And when you write funny, Dave Barry talks back! Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist Dave Barry gets more response from readers than any other writer in the United States. And now the absolute best of Dave Barry is available, complete with those items sent in by Dave's legion of Alert Readers all across the country. But Dave Barry doesn't only talk back to readers. He talks back to traffic cops, dentists, doctors, Congress, and his very dumb dogs.

Fed up with the Republican Right? Then you'll love Al Franken's scathingly hilarious look at America's largest talk show host and his conservative cronies. Funny yet uncompromisingly fair, Franken tackles the issues - and the politicians - in ways few have dared.

While sifting through closets of junk in the mansion they have rented, Qwill and Koko uncover a mystery involving the suicide of the former owner and the murder of a potato farmer. By the author of The Cat Who Wasn't There.

Tupperware ladies, eighties people, and leisure concept salesmen beware: Dave Barry is on the loose and no one is safe! In this collection of eighty essays, the inimitable columnist observes everything that makes America the unique, special place you've grown to love: taxes, toilets, airbags, baseball, beer commercials, and numerous other American artifacts.

Imagine this: When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you — an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker — are convinced that you're facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you must scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there's no way you can anticipate the baffling disappearance of a 300-pound psychic, the fall from grace of a born-again monkey, or the intrusion in your life of a tattooed stranger intent on blowing your mind and most of your fuses.

Imagine this: When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you, an ambitious broker, not overly successful or ethical, know you're facing the Weekend from Hell. With only 72 hours to scheme and scramble your way out of this nightmare, you find yourself confronted with a 300-pound psychic, a tattooed stranger, African rituals, legendary amphibians, outer space, and your own sexuality.

The Expo begins with a literal bang: a bomb wrecks the hotel, killing a housekeeper and causing extensive damage. Luckily for Pickax, Qwill is on the scene, his moustache twitching with suspicions that this bomb was intended as something stronger than a warning to someone. His evidence: Koko and Yum Yum's new interest in cheese, especially Gruyere, Brie and Feta. Qwill and the Siamese are on a case that will demand all their feline intuition and mustachioed insight!

Sissy Hankshaw, an almost flawlessly beautiful small-town girl with big-time dreams, hitchhikes her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bag in Tom Robbins's magical, funny, and most famous novel. Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.

Here is the absolute best of Dave Barry; selections from four of his most popular books, including the hilarious Guide to Guys. Dave Barry is on the loose and no one is safe....

The creator and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond dissects the art of comedy and the making of a sitcom classic. In television, where programs can premiere and disappear in the same week, Everybody Loves Raymond reigned as America's best-loved show for nine years with more than 17 million viewers. As the number-one sitcom, it received more than 70 Emmy nominations, including two wins for best comedy.

Warning: This isn't the real thing...it's funnier! "Gerber's affectionate, giggle-inducing send-up is one giant step toward restoring the somewhat debased art form known as 'parody,'" says Sean Kelly, former editor of National Lampoon. If you love Harry Potter - or if you have had enough of him! - you've gotta hear this.

Without bothering to get approval from the President, the State Department, or even the FTC, Dave Barry's publishers sent him to Tokyo. You'd think they would have known better. Now the word is Barry has set back our diplomatic relations with the whole Pacific Rim by a couple of decades. Japanese culture, dining, sport, and industry all come under Barry's relentless scrutiny.

In a stunning literary debut, Carrie Fisher chronicles the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale, young film star and drug addict, who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands. Carrie Fisher's reading of her first novel evokes the deliciously irreverent humor that formed the lens through which she looked at life in the '80s.

Yes, it's true: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dave Barry's columns get out of the paper and sent around more than those of any other columnist in America. Join Dave as he runs for president, plays Claptonesque guitar in the world's most literary band (The Rock-Bottom Remainders), and gets the real scoop on all those UFO sightings. Warning: Dave Barry has a knack for giving his readers a few laughs and lots of expensive merchandise (ordered from the Home Shopping Club). No, we're not making this up!

Toward the end of the 18th century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates savannas and jungle, travels down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space is curved.

Here are the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale — a young film star and drug addict — who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands.

This laugh-out-loud memoir takes listeners backstage and inside the writers’ room of one of America’s best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than 70 Emmy nominations—including two wins for best comedy—Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade.

Bill Maher first came to national attention as the host of the hit Comedy Central and ABC-TV program Politically Incorrect, where he offered a combustible mixture of irreverence and acerbic humor that helped him to garner a loyal following, as well as a reputation for being a hilarious provocateur.