Satire History

A hilarious, mega-bestseller from the Emmy-winning, Oscar-hosting, Daily Show-anchoring Jon Stewart that finally answers the question -- what is American democracy? Jon Stewart, host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, and his coterie of patriots deliver a hilarious look at...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post “A definitive and ideal biography—pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I’ve ever read.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times A critical darling, Crumb is the first biography of Robert Crumb—one of the most profound...

Inessential Pharmacology is a playful romp through the data behind psychiatric medications. The point of the book is to teach my readers how to understand what a medicine does. I give them the same tools I use, as a practicing psychiatrist, with a lot more humor than used to teach me. We go through a list of common medications, and using those as examples, we learn how to read research about those same medications. We learn about charts, graphs, tables, and the lawsuits and side effects that made these drugs famous. They also made pharmaceutical companies billions. This is a book written ...

The Batshit Crazy Bible isn’t your grandma’s Sunday School companion—unless grandma was into alien gods, divine temper tantrums, and weaponized foreskins. Robert Ragnar, legal eagle turned armchair theologian, has done the unthinkable: read the Bible—every bloody verse of it—cover to cover. And now he’s here to report back, not with sermons or salvation, but with sharp wit, a raised eyebrow, and a healthy dose of historical side-eye. This isn’t about mocking belief—it’s about exposing the bizarre, brutal, and baffling moments buried in the so-called Good Book. From talking...

The very liberal Kirks are throwing a party. For Howard Kirk, liberal sociology lecturer whose deluded sense of heroism has him moving seductively around the university campus, the net must be perfectly cast: ‘if you want to have something that’s genuinely unstructured, you have to plan it carefully.’ Kirk embodies the contradictions of the era’s intellectual and political climate. As he navigates complex relationships with his wife, his students and his colleagues, he pursues personal and professional agendas under the guise of progressive thought.

If you can count on one thing from "Madea" Mabel Simmons, star of the smash hits Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea's Family Reunion, and Madea's Witness Protection, it's that she's got something to say. Now the beloved, sharp-tongued, pistol-packing grandmother has her own...

His name is James. James Trump. In the fifth year of his reign, Trump Barronius the Third is crowned God Emperor. Amidst the celebration, a wave of assassinations of the Trump Imperium's luminaries flies under the radar. Can Agent James Trump track down the evil mastermind behind it all--the insidious Woke-Masmoke--before he brings down the entire Pax Trumpa? Find out in this spy thriller meets future history!

Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race.

Known to historians as "the First American," Benjamin Franklin is without a doubt the most accessible of America's founding fathers. His writings have inspired millions of Americans, and even now, more than 200 years after his death, his wit and humor still brighten lives all across the world. But what was this great man's view on faith? Was he really a Deist as so many historians have proposed? Was he a humanist like so many of his French friends? Is there any possibility that he could have been a Christian? In this unique volume, Bill Fortenberry has collected everything that Franklin ...

Welcome, dear reader, to a journey through time's most ridiculous posturing, preening, and pretending. You hold in your hands a chronicle of humanity's greatest achievement: the art of being absolutely anybody but ourselves. From the moment our ancestors crawled out of caves and realized their neighbors had better caves, we've been locked in an eternal performance. We've powdered, postured, and posed our way through millennia, convinced that the secret to happiness lies in meticulously copying whatever everyone else is doing—preferably six months after it stopped being cool. This book is ...

Forget what you think you know about the Good Book. The BC Bible is not a sermon—it’s a riotous, irreverent, and razor-sharp deep dive into the most bizarre, brutal, and brilliantly baffling stories in the Bible. Written with wit, bite, and a historian’s curiosity, Robert Ragnar takes you on a chronological journey through scripture with a scalpel in one hand and a shot of whiskey in the other. From talking snakes to cosmic floods, divine tantrums to circumcision revenge plots, Ragnar unpacks the ancient texts with equal parts skepticism, satire, and sincere wonder. Raised in the pews...

In this thought-provoking and playful short story collection, David Foster Wallace nudges at the boundaries of fiction with inimitable wit and seductive intelligence. Wallace's stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many guises...

Here is the alternate history premise of this novel: What if Hitler had died in a car crash in 1939? No World War Two. No superpower duopoly. No decline of Britain into debt and dependency. Fast-forward to 1959: America has become a fascist madhouse, run by lunatics in black helicopters. Germany limps on under the rule of a corrupt, ageing Göring. Soviet Russia is still Soviet Russia. And Britain? Free, rich, confident—almost as mighty an empire as in Victoria’s day. Into this world steps Anthony Markham: half-Indian, secretly gay, ferociously patriotic. Tasked with writing the ...

They laughed at him for decades. This book argues that was his plan all along. Long before the rallies and the residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Donald Trump was a ghost in the machine of American culture. He was a punchline in sitcoms, a lyrical shorthand for wealth in hip-hop, and the ultimate boss in the boardroom of reality TV. We all saw the caricature, but what if we missed the strategy? What if the parody wasn't a weapon used against him, but the very source of his power? Tycoon Trump’s Parody-Powered Ascendancy is a groundbreaking cultural analysis that explores the theory of...

Obscure and addictive true tales from history told by one of our most entertaining historians, Giles Milton This program is read by the author, the host of the popular podcast, Unknown History with Giles Milton. The first installment in Giles Milton's outrageously entertaining series, History's...

AD878—Anglo-Saxon Britain is ravaged by the terror of the Vikings. An innocuous deer, Lars, is banished from a superstitious community. In his travels, he makes the acquaintance of an obtuse, crippled raven. Both are outcasts of an unyielding society and therefore, vulnerable in the savage wilderness. Together they trek aimlessly, living from day to day, unsure of their destiny. Their travels are packed with unexpected adventures and perils, but it is not only the warriors and the wild they have to fear, but also the avaricious gods who play fast and loose with them. The twilight of the ...

London, 1772: a young artist called Thomas Rowlandson is making his way through the grimy backstreets of the capital, on his way to begin his studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Within a few years, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank would join him in Piccadilly, turning satire into an artform, taking on the British establishment, and forever changing the way we view power. Set against a backdrop of royal madness, political intrigue, the birth of modern celebrity, French revolution, American independence and the Napoleonic Wars, UPROAR! follows the satirists as they lampoon those in power.

A classic guide to tricks and tactics for winning arguments, with commentary on the use of and defense against each tactic. The best summary of this audiobook is "being right doesn’t mean you’re gonna win, and this is why". It’s the ultimate guide to spotting the many different kinds of bull people pull in order to win over the crowd, rather than argue the point at hand. There’s very few of them that don’t immediately bring examples to mind, and having it laid out clearly like this is the perfect armour to stop people derailing you.

Alexandra Petri's US History contains a lost (invented!) history of America. (A history for people disappointed that the only president whose weird sex letters we have is Warren G. Harding.) Petri's "historical fan fiction" draws on real events and completely absurd fabrications to create a laugh-out-loud, irreverent takedown of our nation's complicated past. A witty, absurdist satire of the last 500 years, Alexandra Petri's US History is the fake textbook you never knew you needed.

In a Kingdom gripped by lies and corruption, King Don Triumph rises to power after a shocking victory in the Great Election of 2016. But his triumph is short-lived as the shadowy Council of Hollow Masks tightens its grip on the nation, manipulating the economy, the media, and the very truth itself. Facing overwhelming odds, King Don assembles a bold alliance to reclaim the kingdom’s future. At his side stands The People’s Champion Elion Musketeer, a brilliant inventor whose revolutionary machine threatens to expose the Council’s deepest secrets; J D Vanti, a fierce Western warrior ...