Entertainment Comedy

This ultimate biography of National Lampoon and its cofounder Doug Kenney offers the first complete history of the immensely popular magazine and its brilliant and eccentric characters. Relying on wonderful stories about the comedy scene in New York City in the 1970s and National Lampoon's place at the center of it, author Josh Karp chronicles how the magazine spawned a popular radio show and two long-running theatrical productions that helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Gilda Radner.

Every now and then, when the planets align in just the right way, a book comes along that changes everything. An author sweats and toils to birth a tome with such colossal cultural impact, it has the power to retune the entire world to a whole new frequency. This is absolutely not one of those books. Not even close. And actually, that all sounds a bit much really, doesn't it? Rhys Nicholson is a multi-award winning comedian, writer and busy mum with an anxiety disorder, a complicated relationship with food and a book deal.

The star of the hit show Glee shares her experiences and insider tips on beauty, fashion, inner strength, and more in an illustrated book that’s part memoir, part how-to, and part style guide. Lea Michele is one of the hardest working performers in show business. Whether she’s starring...

Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s...

In Michael B. Druxman's outrageous comedy, Hail on the Chief!, cantankerous gentleman rancher Oliver Pettridge hates his neighbor, a former cowboy movie star. He's hated him for years over a property line dispute. As the play begins, the neighbor has just been elected President of the United States.

A scathing reexamination of the lives of nine female celebrities in the 2000s, and the sexist, exploitative culture that took them down Welcome to celebrity culture in the early aughts: the reign of Perez Hilton, celebrity sex tapes, and dueling tabloids fed by paparazzi who were willing to do...

This book tells the story of the Footlights, chronicling its evolution from its creation in the 1880s to the present. This book traces the journeys of its most distinguished alumni, including Germaine Greer, John Cleese, Douglas Adams, Peter Cook, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Miriam Margolyes, Emma Thompson, Richard Ayoade, David Mitchell and Sue Perkins, among many others.

Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, ER, Cheers, Law & Order, Will & Grace…Here is the funny, splashy, irresistible insiders’ account of the greatest era in television history -- told by the actors, writers, directors, producers, and the network executives who made it happen…and watched it all fall...

An Esquire Best Book of 2022! Written with inside access, comprehensive research, and a down-to-earth perspective, Phasers on Stun! chronicles the entire history of Star Trek, revealing that its enduring place in pop culture is all thanks to innovative pivots and radical change. For over five...

This program is read by Noah Galvin, who starred in The Good Doctor, Dear Evan Hansen, The Real O'Neals, and Booksmart. "A Star is Bored is an absolute knockout. Riotously funny and wickedly tender." — Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six People...

Have you ever wanted to go to prison? Of course not. What normal person would? But haven't you wondered what it would be like? To be locked up? To do hard time? What is it really like? Is it as bad as the movies? It can't be, can it? Spoiler alert: It is! How did I cope with it? By making jokes out of the situation, which was easier said than done some days. I wanted to write something unique, something different from anything you have ever seen before.

100% of The Late Show’s proceeds from this book go to disaster relief. Whose Boat Is This Boat? Comments That Don’t Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane is a picture book made entirely of quotations from President Donald Trump in the wake of Hurricane Florence. It is the first children’s...

From Lewis Black, the uproarious and perpetually apoplectic New York Times-bestselling author and Daily Show regular, comes a ferociously funny book about his least favorite holiday, Christmas. Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace on earth and goodwill toward all. But not for Lewis Black...

A man of principle Gangadas is very much upset with his manipulative son Jamnadas’ (Sanjay Goradia) dishonesty and easy-money making tactics. Gangadas gets diagnosed of serious illness. However, he refuses to undergo medical treatment with Jamndas’ unethical earnings. Poor Jamnadas sees a ray of hope when he gets an opportunity to participate in reality show that requires him to speak nothing but the truth. The prize money can save his father’s life. What pursues is Jamnadas’ antics to juggle every truth with a lie.

How to do really bad things! What's a woman to wear when she kills her husband? Or plays her detective for a sap? And ultimately, what's the appropriate ensemble for facing a firing squad? Who is the femme fatale? Since time began, every culture has obsessed about her; women have wished to be her, and men - the dumb clucks - have connived to control her.

Meet Josh and Evie Rose, heirs to the notorious legacy of Barbara and Jonathan. In The Children of the Roses, Adler delivers a darkly comic, razor-sharp sequel about love, family, and the havoc we inherit. Josh’s marriage to Victoria seems destined to avoid the mistakes of the past. But when a harmless prank involving missing Milky Ways at their son’s elite private school spirals into all-out war, everything changes.

Omid Djalili's fascinating story begins with an unconventional childhood spent at his family's London guesthouse for visiting Iranians. At school he is kept busy with the beginnings of a passionate love affair with football but he hopes one day to live a more intellectually fulfilled life. For one wonderful summer in California it seems that maybe he will find his spiritual home at UCLA.

In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy - including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar - Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel.

In 1963, 30-year-old Friedman - who had recently quit his job as a Boston advertising executive and returned to his hometown of New York to become a theatrical producer - opened a coffee house for Broadway performers called the Improvisation. His goal? Simply to make a living, and if all went according to plan, to also make enough professional contacts to be able to mount his first Broadway show within a year's time. Later shortened to the Improv, its first West 44th Street location was in a seedy section of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen.

Bringing up Baby. The Philadelphia Story. North by Northwest. An Affair to Remember. When Cary Grant passed away at age 82, fans from every generation mourned. Nearly 20 years later his star shines just as brightly from television and revival-house screens; his name remains synonymous with...