The night before his seventh birthday, Peter Ney and his family were awakened by the sound of yelling and of breaking glass as their home was vandalized. Kristallnacht was just the beginning of the Nazi violence against the Jews, and it shaped the rest of Peters life.Spanning seventy years, Getting Here narrates the many twists and turns of his life. Two months after Kristallnacht, Peters parents placed him on a train to England; he was one of 10,000 German children granted safe re...

_______________'Part memoir, part rant and part joke ... as elusive as it is beguiling' - Sunday Times'If Vonnegut isn't the enduring Good Humor man, who is?' - John Irving, The Times'One of the greatest writers of the past 50 years' - Daily Telegraph_______________Comic riffs and diatribes on the America of G.W. Bush from the author...

The New York Times–bestselling author looks at the sixties generation, and how he and his seventy-five million accomplices made America what it is today.A onetime editor-in-chief of National Lampoon who also spent years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly, P. J. O'Rourke is known as a conservative-minded political humorist and author of such bestsellers as Parliament of Whores. Not everyone knows that he...

“What caused the American Revolution? This is indeed a rhetorical question that for many years historians have begun chapters with. As well they should. For the American Revolution is without a doubt the single most important historical event to occur in this nation except of course for Super Bowl III (Jets 16. Colts 7. This historian won $35).”So goes the skewed sensibility, the muddied mind, the bent pen of one of America's funniest writers, Dave Barry. This time his subject is U...

The twenty-fourth edition in the bestselling bathroom-reading series is jam-packed with over 500 pages of absorbing trivia material.The information miners at the Bathroom Readers' Institute have unearthed a priceless collection of surprising, amazing, head-scratching, and hilarious articles. Divided by length for your sitting convenience, 24-Karat Gold is chock-full of little-known history, random origins, weird news, celebrity secrets, and urban legends. ...

A collection of stories-some well known, some more obscure- capturing some of the best storytelling of this golden age of nonfiction.An anthology of the best new masters of nonfiction storytelling, personally chosen and introduced by Ira Glass, the producer and host of the award-winning public radio program This American Life.These pieces-on teenage white collar criminals, buying a cow, Saddam Hussein, drunken British soccer culture, and how we know everyone in our...

A memoir of America's most turbulent, whimsical decade, in the words of the man who experienced it all.From the New York City of Kline and De Kooning to the jazz era of New Orleans's French Quarter to Ken Kesey's psychedelic California, Prime Green explores the 1960s in all its weird, innocent, fascinating glory. An account framed by two wars, it begins with Robert Stone's last year in the Navy, when he took part in an Antarctic expedition navigating the g...

"If you enjoy these too-good-to-be-true tales, Brunvand's new book will give you hours of pleasure."—Chicago TribuneA fabulously entertaining book from the ultimate authority on those almost believable tales that always happen to a "friend of a friend." Alligators in the sewers? A pet in the microwave? A tragic misunderstanding of the function of cruise control? No, it didn't really happen to your friend's sister's neighbor: it's an urban legend. And no matter how savvy yo...

Snapshots of the U.S.'s last nine generations—from the creators of the Mindset List media sensationJust as high school graduates in 1957 couldn't imagine life without zippers, those of 2009 can't imagine having to enter phone booths and deposit coins in order to call someone from the street corner. Every August, the Mindset List highlights the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of that year's incoming college class. Now this fascinating book extends th...

This "rollicking newspaperman's memoir" offers a personal tour of Chicago's cultural history and makes "a strong case for Second City exceptionalism" ( The New York Times).In 1952 the New Yorker published a three-part essay by A. J. Liebling in which he dubbed Chicago the "Second City." From the skyline to garbage collection, nothing escaped Liebling's withering gaze. Among the outraged responses from Chicago residents was one that Liebling descri...

**Too lazy to drive to his girlfriend's house, a man ties helium balloons to a lawn chair--and ends up at 15,000 feet, closing the L. A. airport.*A Chinese contraception program causes the birth rate to rise when men are discovered taking birth control pills and unrolling condoms over their fingers--exactly as shown in the training film.*A gang of Norwegian thieves carefully uses explosives to open a safe--only to find the safe is filled with dynamite. . .*In the na...

To many, the task of writing about one's life seems daunting and difficult. Where does one begin? What stories will inspire your children and grandchildren, and which will simply amuse them? "Writing Your Life: A Guide to Writing Autobiographies" breaks down the barriers of personal narrative with an easy-to-follow guide that includes thought-provoking questions, encouraging suggestions, memory-jogging activities, tips for writing, advice on publishing one's stories in print and online, an...