I flipped though it and bought it on a whim.It is the best thing I have ever done for myself.This book is amazing!!! It's not just wonderful because it is a great pick-me-up... but it's also brilliant in the writing.Many of the things could be performance pieces or hit a wide audiance. Just read it you won't go wrong! Highly recommended
Product DescriptionNutritiousness aside, May Contain Nuts provides 100% of the daily recommended amount of that essential life-enhancer, laughter. With more than 70 contributors and 150 shots from the loose canon of American humor, it's a stellar edition with plenty of real stars from stage and screen(writing):
Seinfeld's Peter Mehlman, Hairspray's Mark O'Donnell, Ed's Michael Ian Black and the world's most famous drive-in movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs
Plus, there's Roy Blount Jr. on how to travel "Southern" outside the South; summer recipes from our man in the kitchen, Henry Alford; Firesign Theatre's Phil Austin's yuletide "Tale of the Old Detective"; P. J. O'Rourke's not-so-intimate "Diary of a Country Gentleman"; Daniel Radosh's "PowerPoint Anthology of Literature"; and Tom Gliatto's helpful overview of today's thriving cabaret scene. With umpteen illustrations, many perplexing charts, and our first centerfold ever, this volume is party-sized for your reading pleasure.
New in This Issue
- a comprehensive teacher's guide
- a food section (including a transcript from Van Gogh's early cooking show)
- up-to-the-minute newscrawl
- a preview of the new all Law & Order Network
- "Blues for Advanced Beginners"
- Ingenious and iffy tributes to Orson Welles, Dale Earnhardt, Beck, John Edwards, and Celine Dion
About the AuthorThe editor of
More Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor, Michael J. Rosen has been called the unofficial organizer of the National Humor Writer's Union, a pretty good idea for an organization that could offer all kinds of benefits to its struggling members (currently numbering more than 300 who have never been published in
The New Yorker or aired on NPR). He has been called other things as well, like in third grade, and then in seventh grade especially, by certain older kids known as "hoods," who made his life miserable, specifically during gym class, lunch period and after school. Later, much later, the
Washington Post called him a "fidosopher" because of his extensive publications on dogs, dog training, and dog-besotted people. The
New York Times called him an example of creative philanthropy in their special "Giving" section for persuading "writers, artists, photographers and illustrators to contribute their time and talents to books" that benefit Share Our Strength's anti-hunger efforts and animal-welfare causes. As an author of a couple dozen books for children, he's been called...okay, enough with the calling business.
For nearly twenty years, he served as literary director at the Thurber House, a cultural center in the restored home of James Thurber. Garrison Keillor, bless his heart, called it (sorry) "the capital of American humor." While there, Rosen helped to create The Thurber Prize for American Humor, a national book award for humor writing, and edited four anthologies of Thurber's previously unpublished and uncollected work, most recently The Dog Department: James Thurber on Hounds, Scotties and Talking Poodles, happily published by HarperCollins as well.
In his capacity as editor for this biennial, Rosen reads manuscripts year round, beseeching and beleaguering the nation's most renowned and well-published authors, and fending off the rants and screeds from folks who've discovered the ease of self-publishing on the web. Last summer, Rosen edited a lovely book, 101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells; while some critics (all right, one rather outspoken friend) considered this a book of complaints, Rosen has argued that humor, like voting and picketing and returning an appliance that "worked" all of four months before requiring a repair that costs twice the purchase price, humor is about the desire for change. It's responding to the way things are compared to the way you'd like things to be. And it's a much more convivial response than pouting or cornering unsuspecting guests at dinner parties.
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This is the first of the Imponderables series of books.For people like me who love to accumulate useless but fascinating information it is a wonderful book.It asks the questions (Why do we itch, why are there holes in Swiss cheese, why does an X stand for a kiss, etc....)and then proceeds to answer them.If you ever wanted to be a know-it-all (or want your know-it-all to at least have the right answers) then read this book and become the authority on useless information with your family and friends.Much more fascinating than trivia books (after all you might want to know why cashews are not sold in their shells but who really cares who the runner up for the 1998 Ms America was?).
