Comedy Education

The Upright Citizens Brigade knows comedy, but more than that, they know how to coach aspiring comics and average joes alike on the ins and outs of how to create your own stand-out, unique voice. Led by UCB founders Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh, this series features conversations with experts in the field including Amy Poehler, Adam McKay, Ben Schwartz, Lennon Parham, Jessica St. Clair, Andy Daly, Bobby Moynihan, and Nick Kroll, among others. 

The temptation to sin and lure of the forbidden can be impossible to ignore. Rebecca Beiler's recent sexual urges are at odds with her strict religious upbringing. Married at 17 to a sexually repressed man who left her a widow, at age 26 she now finds herself yearning to be taken hard by hot men with chiseled bodies. When an indiscretion with a neighbor leads to a six-month expulsion from her community, Rebecca attempts to purge herself of her sinful desires by giving into them, in full. Unfortunately, each new intoxicating encounter only intensifies her cravings — intense lustful ...

Executives from The Second City—the world’s premier comedy theater and school of improvisation—reveal improvisational techniques that can help any organization develop innovators, encourage adaptable leaders, and build transformational businesses. For more than fifty years, The Second City...

Learn how to persuade cats--the world's most skeptical and cautious negotiators--with this primer on rhetoric and argument from the New York Times bestselling author of Thank You for Arguing! Cats are skilled manipulators who can talk you into just about anything without a single word. They can...

The story of what happened to Flashman, the caddish bully of Tom Brown's Schooldays, after he was expelled in drunken disgrace from Rugby school in the late 1830s...

It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the...

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AN ADAM SAVAGE BOOK CLUB PICK The book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, “When am I ever going to use this in the real world?” “Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining, Humble Pi is a charming and very readable...

“A rare voice, someone who challenges orthodoxies in the way that many journalists and public intellectuals claim to do but don’t. It is bracing to spend time in the company of such a smart, plain-spoken and unpredictable person.”—Wall Street Journal A striking collection of essays from...

An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime—sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag—to aid a professor’s psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong? In Luke Kennard’s audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a...

This program is read by the author. “One of my favorite books of all time.” ―Amy Schumer 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 For years, Gary...

This book has been in my head for four years. It's great for students, teachers or anyone interested in writing and producing sketch comedy. Section One: The History of Comedy to Today's Sketch Comedy: Do you know the world's oldest joke? Section Two: Elements of Sketch Comedy Writing: Characters, Setting, Style, etc. Sections Three: Let's write your first/next sketch - Brainstorming, Improv, Outlines and Drafts Section Four: Producing your sketch on stage or video EIGHT IS NEVER ENOUGH started performing in Times Square since 2002, Now famous for its off-Broadway Improv comedy shows and ...

"AN ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT SATIRE" "a fun read and not to mention hilarious" "Peak fiction." "this is ironically genius level." On her way home with a report card full of D and F grades, Amy is hit by a truck and transported into a world of stupidity. Now, she must use her idiocy to defeat enemies both smart and dumb, evolve into the ultimate idiot, and remake the universe into one that accepts and celebrates stupidity. Along the way, she'll fight and team up with other monster girls, free more than one world from the tyranny of intelligence, and show everyone the true power, love, and wisdom...

Tucker Max graduated with high honors from the University of Chicago in 1998 and received an academic scholarship to Duke Law School, where he graduated in 2001, despite the fact that he spent part of one semester--while still enrolled in classes--living in Cancun. He took these degrees and set...

Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor. Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of...

""A pleasure. ... Suitable for beach reading or for mainlining before a dinner party."" —Dan Piepenbring, New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) ""Absorbing. ... As thoughtfully written as it is nuts."" —Chicago Tribune A collection of the world’s most mind-boggling...

“Hanley’s dyslexia makes this audio format especially significant, as it represents an accessible way for readers with learning disabilities, just like him, to comprehend and enjoy his story.”—Booklist This program is read by the author, comedian and severe dyslexic Phil Hanley, who...

A Duke back from the dead and his "widowed" Duchess find their marriage of convenience has become anything but convenient. 👒 A sweet, feisty heroine with an irrepressible habit of seeing the good in everyone 🎩 A brooding hero who has no time for "good" and even less for an enticing wife 🦜 A straight-talking parrot with a penchant for poorly-timed commentary 💍 A forced reunion between two strangers who happen to be husband and wife Daphne’s Story. In the 1st instalment of the Taming of the Dukes series by bestselling humorous historical romance author DG Rampton, an enjoyable ...

“A painfully beautiful memoir….Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive.” —E. L. Doctorow A revered, many times honored (George Polk, Peabody, and Emmy Award winner, to name but a few) journalist, novelist, and playwright, Roger Rosenblatt shares the...

From one of the world’s most celebrated humor writers, this easy-to-follow, step-by-step book lays out a clear system for producing living, breathing comedy characters that audiences will fall in love with.

By his longtime friend and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, the definitive biography of Larry McMurtry, the legendary author and screenwriter of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and Brokeback Mountain, who transformed our vision of the West. Before Larry McMurtry became one of the...