Great American Humor

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots - the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others. Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative.

Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, “The Babe Ruth of the Big House,” who never hit a home run sober. If you’ve never heard of them—or of the homeless baseball team the Ruppert Mundys—it’s because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.

Adrian Martin and his family set out to sail the Great Loop, one of America's best kept boating secrets. But aside from the journey and the scenery, this book is about what it is like to live on a boat twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in all weather and in all conditions. More than anything, Adrian wants to relate with honesty and humor what this lifestyle is like for all the many people who have dreamed about living aboard and experiencing the cruising life. And to add to the authenticity, Adrian gets seasick riding in the back seat of an automobile, or at the carnival, or when ...

A short story satire for our times Young Billy Hoeksma, future governor of Michigan, is age six. He skips away from school one day in the early 1970s, urged on to steal a Playboy magazine. Young Billy heads off to the drug store in the wrong direction. He gets lost. When Billy is reported missing by embarrassed school authorities, his wealthy father, the rising right-wing business and political figure William "Will" Hoeksma, Sr., fears the boy’s been kidnapped. He orders his private security team – headed by the enigmatic Vietnam veteran Wilbur Tuttle – to find his son. And so the ...

Volume II of Benjamin Franklin's America begins with Franklin's departure to England in 1757. It covers his diplomatic career in both England and France, the signing of the 1783 Peace Treaty, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, Franklin's wit an humor, his leadership in the fight to abolish slavery and his scientific investigations. Together with Volume I, this biography presents the undeniable reality that we live today in Benjamin Franklin's America.

Written in 1923 and originally published in France, The Great American Novel examines the impossibility of writing such work in America. Williams not only writes the novel with poetic satire and pathos but allows us into his writing process, as he strives to define a young America at the end of a World War and the beginning of the “Roaring ‘20s”.

A poet often writes about the world around him/her or the world within. This is where the inspiration comes from, where his/her perspective and imagination are colored. When a dog or two, (or three or four), enters a poet’s life, either by choice or by accident, they tend to sneak into the poet’s poems, either as the subject or part of the landscape of the poem, like a bark in the distance or a low howl at your feet begging for a bone. For Ronald j Palmer, these are those poems. Dogged is a tender celebration of the bond between human and dog, an elegant lament to nature, time, and ...

Private investigator Frank Harken’s worldwide fame has only made him more cynical. And living in a giant mall covering the entire USA only serves to drive him nuts on a daily basis. So, when a femme fatale barges in asking Harken to track down her sister, he knows when he’s heard an offer too good to be true.

Tras un proceso de selección en apariencia sencillo, Diego Pirita comienza a trabajar como recepcionista en un hotel de paso. Las primeras instrucciones que recibe dejan una cosa en claro: sin importar lo que ocurra, una de las habitaciones debe mantenerse siempre desocupada para recibir a un cliente distinguido. Podría llegar en los próximos minutos o podría llegar dentro de muchos años. Lo único seguro es que no avisará.