Humor / Pop Culture

The Amazing Thing About the Way It Goes takes on the amazing in the ordinary in this side-splitting series of short commentaries. Pearl-McPhee turns her trademark wit and perspective to everything from creative discipline to a way you would never think about fixing your email situation. This book looks at everyday problems--and honestly won't do much to solve them--but at least you'll be laughing.

Jon Stewart, host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, and his coterie of patriots deliver a hilarious look at American government . . . Termed a "political king-maker" by Newsweek, and "the Dan Rather of infotainment" by Vanity Fair, Jon Stewart, along with the writers of The Daily Show, combines his riotous wit and razor-sharp insight in this hilarious book. American-style democracy is the world's most beloved form of government, which explains why so many other nations are eager for us to impose it on them, but what is it exactly?

In America (The Book), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer their insights into our unique system of government, dissecting its institutions, explaining its history and processes, and exploring the reasons why concepts like "One man, one vote," "Government by the people," and "Every vote counts" have become such popular urban myths.

But as perfect as America is in every single way, America is broken! And we can't exchange it because we're 236 years past the 30-day return window. Look around--we don't make anything anymore, we've mortgaged our future to China, and the Apologist-in-Chief goes on world tours just to bow before foreign leaders. Worse, the L.A. Four Seasons Hotel doesn't even have a dedicated phone button for the Spa. You have to dial an extension! Where did we lose our way?!

It's high time we restored America to the greatness it never lost!

Luckily, America Again will singlebookedly pull this country back from the brink. It features everything from chapters, to page numbers, to fonts. Covering subject's ranging from healthcare ("I shudder to think where we'd be without the wide variety of prescription drugs to treat our maladies, such as think-shuddering") to the economy ("Life is giving us lemons, and we're shipping them to the Chinese to make our lemon-flavored leadonade") to food ("Feel free to deep fry this book-it's a rich source of fiber"), Stephen gives America the dose of truth it needs to get back on track.

She is a single, twentysomething, gun-loving, Christian, Republican writer and blogger, the daughter of a Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee. He is a married, forty-year-old, gun-fearing, atheist, Democrat comedian, the son of a lesbian former Social Security employee. Meghan McCain and Michael Ian Black barely know each other. But they are about to change the way politics is discussed in America.

For nine years, Stephen Colbert's persona "Colbert"--a Republican superhero and parody of conservative political pundits--informed audiences on current events, politics, social issues, and religion while lampooning conservative political policy, biblical literalism, and religious hypocrisy. To devout, vocal, and authoritative lay Catholics, religion is central to both the actor and his most famous character. Yet many viewers wonder, "Is Colbert a practicing Catholic in real life or is this part of his act?" America's Most Famous Catholic (According to Himself) examines the ways in which Colbert challenges perceptions of Catholicism and Catholic mores through his faith and comedy.

Religion and the foibles of religious institutions have served as rich fodder for scores of comedians over the years. What set "Colbert" apart on his Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report, was that his critical observations were made more powerful and harder to ignore because he approached religious material not from the predictable stance of the irreverent secular comedian but from his position as one of the faithful. He is a Catholic celebrity who can bridge critical outsider and participating insider, neither fully reverent nor fully irreverent.

Providing a digital media ethnography and rhetorical analysis of Stephen Colbert and his character from 2005 to 2014, author Stephanie N. Brehm examines the intersection between lived religion and mass media, moving from an exploration of how Catholicism shapes Colbert's life and world towards a conversation about how "Colbert" shapes Catholicism. Brehm provides historical context by discovering how "Colbert" compares to other Catholic figures, such Don Novello, George Carlin, Louis C.K., and Jim Gaffigan, who have each presented their views of Catholicism to Americans through radio, film, and television. The last chapter provides a current glimpse of Colbert on The Late Show, where he continues to be voice for Catholicism on late night, now to an even broader audience.

America's Most Famous Catholic (According to Himself) also explores how Colbert carved space for Americans who currently define their religious lives through absence, ambivalence, and alternatives. Brehm reflects on the complexity of contemporary American Catholicism as it is lived today in the often-ignored form of Catholic multiplicity: thinking Catholics, cultural Catholics, cafeteria Catholics, and lukewarm Catholics, or what others have called Colbert Catholicism, an emphasis on the joy of religion in concert with the suffering. By examining the humor in religion, Brehm allows us to see clearly the religious elements in the work and life of comedian Stephen Colbert.

American Cornball is Christopher Miller's irresistibly funny illustrated survey of popular humor--the topics that used to make us laugh, from hiccups and henpecked-husbands to outhouses and old maids--and what it tells us about our country yesterday and today.

Why has our sense of humor changed over the years? Why did our grandparents think things like safes falling out of high windows or angry housewives waiting with rolling pins for their drunken husbands to come home were so funny? While we snicker at pop culture references, Americans in time past gravitated towards slapstick and jokes that...don't seem so funny in retrospect.

Miller revisits nearly 200 comic staples that have been passed down through our culture for generations, many originating from the vaudeville age. He explores the (often unseemly) contexts from which they arose, why they were funny in their time, and why they eventually lost their appeal. The result is a kind of taxonomy of humor during America's golden age that provides a deeper, more profound look at the prejudices, preoccupations, and peculiarities of a nation polarized between urban and rural, black and white, highborn and lowbrow.

As he touches on issues of racism and sexism, cultural stereotypes and violence, Miller reveals how dramatically our moral sensibilities have shifted, most notably in the last few decades. Complete with more than 100 period illustrations, American Cornball is a richly entertaining survey of our shifting comic universe.

"With American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson somehow manages to avoid the pitfalls of self-indulgence and self-importance that plague most (okay, all) Hollywood autobiographies. He has, instead, written a book that is hilarious and irrepressibly daft, yet also kind, poignant, and undeniably wise. It was a joy to read." -- Dennis Lehane, New York Times Bestselling author of The Given Day

Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark--as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer.

To numb the pain of failure, Ferguson found comfort in drugs and alcohol, addictions that eventually led to an aborted suicide attempt. (He forgot to do it when someone offered him a glass of sherry.) But his story has a happy ending: success on the hit sitcom The Drew Carey Show, and later as the host of CBS's Late Late Show. By far Ferguson's greatest triumph was his decision to become a U.S. citizen, a milestone he achieved in early 2008.

In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson talks a red, white, and blue streak about everything our Founding Fathers feared.