Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was born a breeder. I had already done the hard work of growing a couple ovaries full of eggs, and I was on my way to start hunting for a sperm donor. I was not strong enough to overcome my single-minded compulsion to procreate. #2 I loved playing with my dolls, and I loved the maternal feeling I got when I played with them. However, I was constantly irritated by the fact that my dolls would always want something. #3 I was always in awe of the women around me who seemed to effortlessly handle everything in their life. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be able to handle everything in my life without feeling overwhelmed. #4 I had a very close relationship with my mother, who was very nurturing. I was always the designated sitter at family get-togethers, and I loved children. I was good at babies.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 I was born a breeder. I had already done the hard work of growing a couple ovaries full of eggs, and I was on my way to start hunting for a sperm donor. I was not strong enough to overcome my compulsion to procreate. #2 I loved to play with my dolls, and I loved the maternal feeling I got when I played with them. But everyone always bought me new dolls as gifts, and I ended up with a special shelf full of creepy porcelain sprites in bonnets that I had to turn around before going to sleep at night. #3 I was always in awe of the women around me who seemed to have no problem handling everything in their life. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be able to handle everything in my life calmly and gracefully, without fear or selfcongratulation. #4 I had a very close relationship with my dolls, and I would spend hours caring for them. I was the designated sitter at every family gettogether. I was good at kids, and they liked me.

An unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the rise and fall of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour -- the provocative, politically charged program that shocked the censors, outraged the White House, and forever changed the face of television. 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 first-ever all-access 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. Before it was suddenly removed from the CBS lineup (reportedly under pressure from the Nixon administration), The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was a ratings powerhouse. It helped launch the careers of comedy legends such as Steve Martin and Rob Reiner, featured groundbreaking musical acts like the Beatles and the Who, and served as a cultural touchstone for the antiwar movement of the late 1960s. Drawing on extensive original interviews with Tom and Dick Smothers and dozens of other key players -- as well as more than a decade's worth of original research -- Dangerously Funny brings readers behind the scenes for all the battles over censorship, mind-blowing musical performances, and unforgettable sketches that defined the show and its era. David Bianculli delves deep into this never-told story, to find out what really happened and to reveal why this show remains so significant to this day.

Critical studies attempting to define and dissect American humor have been published steadily for nearly one hundred years. However, until now, key documents from that history have never been brought together in a single volume for students and scholars. What's So Funny? Humor in American Culture, a collection of 15 essays, examines the meaning of humor and attempts to pinpoint its impact on American culture and society, while providing a historical overview of its progres-sion. Essays from Nancy Walker and Zita Dresner, Joseph Boskin and Joseph Dorinson, William Keough, Roy Blount, Jr., and others trace the development of American humor from the colonial period to the present, focusing on its relationship with ethnicity, gender, violence, and geography. An excellent reader for courses in American studies and American social and cultural history, What's So Funny? explores the traits of the American experience that have given rise to its humor.

Most of the bright and talented actresses who made America laugh in the 1950s are off the air today, but their pioneering Hollywood careers irrevocably changed the face of television comedy. These smart and sassy women successfully negotiated the hazards of the male-dominated workplace with class and humor, and the work they did in the 1950s is inventive still by today's standards. Unable to fall back on strong language, shock value, or racial and sexual epithets, the female sitcom stars of the 1950s entertained with pure talent and screen savvy. As they did so, they helped to lay the foundation for the development of television comedy. This book pays tribute to 10 prominent television actresses who played lead roles in popular comedy shows of the 1950s. Each chapter covers the works and personalities of one actress: Lucille Ball (I Love Lucy), Gracie Allen (The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show), Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks), Spring Byington (December Bride), Joan Davis (I Married Joan), Anne Jeffreys (Topper), Donna Reed (The Donna Reed Show), Ann Sothern (Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show), Gale Storm (My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna), and Betty White (Life with Elizabeth). For each star, a career sketch is provided, concentrating primarily on her television work but also noting achievements in other areas. Appendices offer cast and crew lists, a chronology, and an additional biographical sketch of 10 less familiar actresses who deserve recognition.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year The witty and exuberant New York Times bestselling author and record-setting Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings relays the history of humor in “lively, insightful, and crawling with goofy factlings,” (Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go Bernadette)—from fart jokes on clay Sumerian tablets to the latest Twitter gags and Facebook memes. Where once society’s most coveted trait might have been strength or intelligence or honor, today, in a clear sign of evolution sliding off the trails, it is being funny. Yes, funniness. Consider: Super Bowl commercials don’t try to sell you anymore; they try to make you laugh. Airline safety tutorials—those terrifying laminated cards about the possibilities of fire, explosion, depressurization, and drowning—have been replaced by joke-filled videos with multimillion-dollar budgets and dance routines. Thanks to social media, we now have a whole Twitterverse of amateur comedians riffing around the world at all hours of the day—and many of them even get popular enough online to go pro and take over TV. In his “smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny” (Booklist, starred review) Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn’t—to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. “Fascinating, entertaining and—I’m being dead serious here—important” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically), Planet Funny is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.

The comedians of the 1950s and 1960s were a totally different breed of relevant, revolutionary performer from any that came before or after, comics whose humor did much more than pry guffaws out of audiences. Gerald Nachman presents the stories of the groundbreaking comedy stars of those years, each one a cultural harbinger: • Mort Sahl, of a new political cynicism • Lenny Bruce, of the sexual, drug, and language revolution • Dick Gregory, of racial unrest • Bill Cosby and Godfrey Cambridge, of racial harmony • Phyllis Diller, of housewifely complaint • Mike Nichols & Elaine May and Woody Allen, of self-analytical angst and a rearrangement of male-female relations • Stan Freberg and Bob Newhart, of encroaching, pervasive pop media manipulation and, in the case of Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding, of the banalities of broadcasting • Mel Brooks, of the Yiddishization of American comedy • Sid Caesar, of a new awareness of the satirical possibilities of television • Joan Rivers, of the obsessive craving for celebrity gossip and of a latent bitchy sensibility • Tom Lehrer, of the inane, hypocritical, mawkishly sentimental nature of hallowed American folkways and, in the case of the Smothers Brothers, of overly revered folk songs and folklore • Steve Allen, of the late-night talk show as a force in American comedy • David Frye and Vaughn Meader, of the merger of showbiz and politics and, along with Will Jordan, of stretching the boundaries of mimicry • Shelley Berman, of a generation of obsessively self-confessional humor • Jonathan Winters and Jean Shepherd, of the daring new free-form improvisational comedy and of a sardonically updated view of Midwestern archetypes • Ernie Kovacs, of surreal visual effects and the unbounded vistas of video Taken together, they made up the faculty of a new school of vigorous, socially aware satire, a vibrant group of voices that reigned from approximately 1953 to 1965. Nachman shines a flashlight into the corners of these comedians’ chaotic and often troubled lives, illuminating their genius as well as their demons, damaged souls, and desperate drive. His exhaustive research and intimate interviews reveal characters that are intriguing and all too human, full of rich stories, confessions, regrets, and traumas. Seriously Funny is at once a dazzling cultural history and a joyous celebration of an extraordinary era in American comedy.

Timeless, Four-Book Comedy Collection Two English scallywags masquerading as hapless heroes and the last surviving warrior monk of an ancient Thai order, leave no stone unturned and no mishap untouched as they hunt for the oft-missing golden box that contains the dental remains of the Buddha. Their exhaustive searches and penchant for mayhem take them from an isolated Thai monastery in the Cardamom jungle to find a renegade monk in Thailand suspected of stealing the Buddha relic. Hunt an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier in Cambodia with ties to a family of scientists who want to clone the Buddha. Pursue an Iranian Mercenary and his team in Vietnam, who are funded by a ruthless sheikh seeking the Buddha relic for revenge, and ultimately, solve the mystery behind the deaths of the Buddha’s descendants. Follow the adventures of a combatant monk and two unlikely heroes as they inject chaos into every situation in Siam Storm, a hilarious high–octane thriller series!

Annis is on a quest to save her sister Bliss and the only way she can do it is to break a twenty-year old curse. Annis does not intend to let anyone frighten her off or stop her from doing what she must to save her sister. Not the suspicious people in the small village where she stops to seek information, not the heavy mist that descends like sentinels on the hills, not the beady, black-eyed ravens that keep watch, and especially not Brogan, the condemned lord, and the only way she can make sure of that is to let him join her on her quest. Though, it is not much of an option since he insists. Brogan of the Clan MacRae is on a quest to save the determined, willful Annis from herself. She refuses to accept the truth… the curse that had been cast on the three clans twenty odd years ago cannot be broken. He and the other two cursed lords, Odran and Rannick, have tried. If they failed, surely Annis would, and she could possibly be harmed in the process. He had to admit she had caught his interest when he had first met the fiery red-haired beauty, a memorable meeting for sure, since he had been covered in blood and she faints at the sight of blood, which led to her falling into his arms. Be that as it may, he was here to make sure no harm came to her, see her through her futile quest, and return her home. However, there was another reason he had chased after her and when she discovered his secret, they would be no containing her fury. All does not go as either Annis or Brogan planned and when the witch finally shows herself, it sends the couple on another quest where long-kept lies and secrets abound. Brogan does all he can to keep her safe, and Annis discovers that she is not only fighting to save her sister, but she is also fighting to free Brogan from the curse. Through it all the couple find something neither were looking for—love. Author’s note: There is a prequel to this trilogy… Highland Intrigue A Prequel. You get to meet most of the characters in the trilogy and see how Brogan and Annis first met and find out what brought them to this point. Also, while Annis and Brogan’s love story concludes in this book, there is a story arc/mystery that runs through to book three, Highlander The Cursed Lord. Highland Intrigue Trilogy Highland Intrigue A Prequel Book one, The Silent Highlander Book two, The Condemned Highlander Book three, Highlander The Cursed Lord