Humor Celebrity

Decades before The Daily Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour proved there was a place on television for no-holds-barred political comedy with a decidedly antiauthoritarian point of view. In this explosive, revealing history of the show, veteran entertainment journalist David Bianculli tells the fascinating story of its three-year network run---and the cultural impact that's still being felt today.

Red carpet fashion laureate, comic icon, and outspoken superstar Joan Rivers gives her signature straight-talking advice to women on how to live better through looking better. Joan Rivers’s abiding life philosophy is simple: in the appearance focused society of the twenty-first century, beauty...

"A sparkling debut novel...a bittersweet tale about love, marriage, and the perils of fame." —People Julia and Joe Ferraro are living the good life in Manhattan now that Joe’s finally made it; he’s the star of a hit TV show and has just been nominated for a Golden Globe. Even better, Julia...

Beloved actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. shares hilarious and poignant stories of his improbable life, focusing on his relationship with his legendary father, adventures with Hollywood icons, the origins of his environmental activism, addiction and recovery, and his lifelong search...

Comic glow and self-mockery. Addiction and depression. Dave Itzkoff draws a lively portrait of Robin Williams. It's a fresh and original look at the actor whose work touched millions of people around the world.

Jasper and Annie are a pair of jobless no-hopers who have dropped into the cracks between the paving slabs of life. Rather than bothering to climb out, they have embraced their situation and created a life based around doing pretty much nothing. That is, apart from visiting various chronic illness clubs for free refreshments and selling old cassette tapes online. But when a customer leaves negative feedback for a month-old purchase without first making contact, Jasper seeks retribution.

After years of working as an image-obsessed actress in Hollywood, Roxanne finds herself at rock bottom from a disease that is anything but glamorous. In her first year of recovery, Roxanne has to take accountability for her past. From tales of being mistaken for a prostitute at the Hotel Bel-Air to botching a threesome attempt with an A-list celebrity, she must face the truth about herself and stop playing the victim.

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...

This program is read by the author. The compelling, edgy, compassionate, laugh-out-loud memoir from Kari Ferrell, formerly known as the "Hipster Grifter" Before Anna Delvey, before the Tinder Swindler, there was Kari Ferrell. Adopted at a young age by a Mormon family in Utah, Kari struggled with...

Known for her sharp, witty and surreal view on everyday life, Lucy shares the unpredictable craziness of being a mum in this brilliant and laugh-out-loud 'mumoir'. Mums everywhere will recognise the madness of it all. Like when Lucy was hospitalised during her third trimester with chest pains but it turned out to be a burrito. Or when she was so tired at the park she forgot her own child's name.

Tom Wilson, the actor, comedian, and writer best known for playing "Biff" in the classic movie "Back to the Future," goes on an unplanned adventure after meeting fellow actor Clayton Moore, the man who played The Lone Ranger on T.V., experienced the pitfalls of pop celebrity, and most notably, died over a decade ago.

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.

A sharp, funny examination of fame in the digital era and what makes our hunger for it equally alluring and embarrassing—from the podcasters behind Who? Weekly While being photographed in 1966, Warhol reportedly said, “Everyone wants to be famous.” (To which his photographer, Nat...

What do the lives of Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and other historical figures have in common with Paula Poundstone? In the hands of this wryly observant and self-deprecating comedian, the answer is outrageously funny and unexpectedly touching. Poundstone compares her crazy life to theirs, as she holds forth on her children, her career, and the time in her life when it appeared she would lose them both.

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.

>Born into the violence of South Bronx ghetto life, the comic pioneer of TV’s Good Times fame offers a hilarious and politically charged review of his career as one of television’s first hugely successful Black stars. From opening for the Black Panthers and getting his first Tonight Show spot to becoming the first “Black” TV sitcom star, having comedians David Letterman and Jay Leno writing jokes for him, recording number-one comedy albums, and opening for rock n’ roll bands in 50,000 seat stadiums, Walker’s career hit all the highs.

Growing up in a Philadelphia suburb in the 1970s was an easy life. Well, easy as long as you didn't have dyslexia or ADD, or were a Jew. And once you added gay into the mix, life became more difficult. So Todd Glass decided to hide the gay part, no matter how comic, tragic, or comically tragic the results. Now, Todd has written an open, honest, and hilarious memoir in an effort to help everyone - young and old, gay and straight - breathe a little more freely.

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.

In this "laugh-out-loud funny” book (Hank Green, New York Times bestselling author), social media star and comedian Josh Sundquist takes readers on his hilarious journey to the fringes of viral stardom to discover if it’s possible to be both very famous and very happy As a semi-famous...

Labor Day, 1969: Two recent college graduates move to New York to edit a new magazine called the National Lampoon. Over the next decade, Henry Beard and Doug Kenney, along with a loose amalgamation of fellow satirists such as Michael O’Donoghue and P. J. O’Rourke, popularized a smart, caustic, ironic brand of humor that has become the dominant voice of American comedy. Ranging from sophisticated political satire to broad raunchy jokes, the National Lampoon introduced iconoclasm to the mainstream, selling millions of copies to an audience both large and devoted.