Satire History

From visionary creator Kenya Barris (beloved TV sitcom Black-ish and the podcast Unusual Suspects). Starring comedy legends Jenifer Lewis, Cedric the Entertainer, and Niecy Nash-Betts, Big Age follows recently retired couple Dot and Butch Watts' reluctant relocation to their new Floridian home, Sunset Gardens, a senior community that is anything but relaxing.

Kaleidoscopic culture critic Chuck Klosterman rewrites the history of reality, built off a question that has never been asked or (in all likelihood) even considered: What if Phillip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle was actually about rock music? The Velvet Underground & Nico was released...

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 ...

At last—the definitive field guide to doing nothing… brilliantly. Part faux-history, part ridiculous self-help, this delightfully unserious book uncovers the “lost” chronicles of thumb twiddling—from ancient rain rituals and secret knight codes to royal salon scandals and laboratory-grade procrastination. You’ll meet legendary twiddlers (real, imagined, and questionably sourced), tour the great debates of clockwise vs. counter-clockwise, and discover why a tiny circular motion just might be the world’s most soothing coping mechanism. Inside you’ll find: A totally unnecessary...

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 ...

In this bold and unapologetic celebrity memoir, comedian and sitcom icon Roseanne Barr delivers sharp political satire, behind-the-scenes television stories, and fearless cultural commentary on fame, feminism, class, and controversy. Roseanne Barr is a force of nature. From revolutionizing the...

“Séamas O’Reilly has created a vast mosaic of voices, each sparkling with heartache and wit. I’m in love with every character in this novel, and like most prestige dramas, it ended far too soon.” —Caroline O'Donoghue, author of The Rachel Incident A dazzling novel about a community...

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...

“Genius . . . [This] is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives.” —Stacey D’Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review “Imaginative, full of a love for literature, and . . . exceptionally entertaining.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Nazi Literature in the Americas is Roberto...

La obra de Francisco Quevedo abarca la mayoría de los géneros prosísticos del siglo XVIII y refleja su visión pesimista de la sociedad española de los Austrias menores. El Buscón, extraordinaria novela picaresca, combina la crítica social con la intención de crear una obra de arte del lenguaje.

Discover the real truth behind the original fake news with this in-depth history of beloved humor publication, The Onion. In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.”...

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...

The History of England from Henry IV to Charles I, by a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian. N.B. There will be very few dates in this History! Jane Austen wrote The History of England in 1791, at the age of just 15, as a satirical parody of 18th-century historical textbooks. It pokes fun at the apparent impartiality of contemporary historians and contains more opinions about the monarchs’ relative characters than any facts or dates. The History of England was not published until 1922, more than a century after Austen’s death.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, the New Yorker Longlisted for the PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Eisner Award Nominee for Best Comics-Related Book “A definitive and ideal biography—pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I’ve ever...

Her mission to the past is in shambles. Her future’s in deadly peril. Can this resourceful spitfire stop the present from going sideways? Wilda Firestone suffers no fools. And the seasoned retiree refuses to be tempted by the thrill of time-traveling shenanigans and instead buckles down to train her clueless new protégé. But when a bomb reduces the time machine next door to ashes and reduces her life’s work to rubble, the angry woman takes on a dangerous investigation… Ignoring her own battle scars from past time-hopping adventures, Wilda convinces her trainee to jump to 1850s ...

The internet is not okay. This book explains why. The Art of Memes is a sharp, strange, laugh-out-loud field manual for anyone who has ever sent a screenshot, survived a group chat, laughed at a raccoon, or watched a joke die the moment a brand said, “We understood the assignment.” Part meme history, part comedy guide, part survival manual for online culture, this book explores how memes spread, why they work, why they die, and why one badly cropped image can explain modern society better than a college lecture. Inside, you’ll discover: How memes evolved from folk jokes, forums, image...

¿Por qué las advertencias de hace décadas describen nuestro mundo actual con tanta exactitud? 1984 y Rebelión en la granja no son solo novelas; son profecías que definen nuestra comprensión de la política moderna. Esta colección presenta dos visiones complementarias sobre cómo se pierde la libertad: una a través del miedo y la vigilancia, y la otra a través de la mentira y la manipulación.

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 an uncertain future, nothing is more dangerous than an original idea. The Oracle, the greatest artificial intelligence program ever known, has erased history. In its place, The Oracle has created a post-racial society canceling words, peoples, moments, and ideas that cause the slightest disturbance to the greater peace. The Oracle controls all thought and language. Gabriel Prosser, the slave behind Gabriel's Rebellion, is reborn with an original idea: that mankind should be free. He pulls back the veil of the cybernetic world to realize that The Oracle is lying about history, insisting ...

A marijuana mystery, the story of Rolland Greene. Rolland Greene, a local writer, and his friends find themselves wrapped up in a complex paper chase. Rolland Greene takes you to the heartland of Northern California and reveals the mind and heart of a Mendonesian caught up in high strangeness. Rolland spends his time writing his political treatise, but suddenly finds himself trying to survive the tumult surrounding his lifestyle and friends. Rolland and his buds all find themselves tormented by bad luck when criminals begin pursuit of a treasure unique to Mendocino, the guidebook to crime. ...