Biography Humor

Beyond memoir, this guidebook offers practical advice on everything from "How to Be the Black Friend" to "How to Be the (Next) Black President" to "How to Celebrate Black History Month". This is a humorous, intelligent, and audacious guide that challenges and satirizes the so-called experts, purists, and racists who purport to speak for all Black people. With honest storytelling and biting wit, Baratunde plots a path not just to blackness, but one open to anyone interested in simply "how to be".

A late bloomer who came to her career later in life, humorist Wendi Aarons shares the joys, stumbles, and outfit mishaps she’s experienced on her road to no longer giving a f***. It’s a journey from chunky heels and bad choices from the juniors department to the panache of a comfortable linen tunic (metaphorically, but also literally), enjoying her second act and unapologetically chasing her dreams.

Aisha Harris has made a name for herself as someone you can turn to for a razor-sharp take on whatever show or movie everyone is talking about. Now, she turns her talents inward, mining the benchmarks of her nineties childhood and beyond to analyze the tropes that are shaping all of us, and our ability to shape them right back.

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.

For as long as Daisy May Cooper can remember, she's been fascinated with the unexplained. Ghosts, spirits, tea leaves, astrological charts, paranormal activity - you name it, she's been obsessed!

When 20-year-old Jay Mohr moved to New York City, he never thought he would land his first real job on Saturday Night Live. But he did - and what followed were two crazy years of trying to keep up with his talented cast mates and get on the air as often as possible. Jay offers an intimate first-person account of the inner workings of Saturday Night Live - the audition, the pitch meetings, and how skits make the final cut of the show. Jay also dishes on the guest hosts, the musical guests, and, of course, his cast mates.

Because no one will write an unauthorized biography about Emmy-winning actor and comedian Chris Elliott, he has done it himself. Listener, you’re hereby warned that much of this book will be disturbing. The Guy Under the Sheets is a behind-the-scenes memoir so personal, so provocative, that Elliott nearly sued himself to halt publication: The most shocking revelation, corroborated by numerous unnamed sources, is that Elliott is not the absurdist comedian that Rolling Stone once called "a genius". In fact, he’s a slightly dim-witted no-talent from a celebrity family.

Don entered the workforce as a young man barely out of high school, full of enthusiasm and idealism. He soon received a reality check about corporate America. Raised in the middle class, he believed in the value system of an honest day's work for an honest wage. That by doing what was "right" and working hard, he would succeed. The Company Store, however, had other plans for him and his coworkers - the American working class.

When Southern belle Ellie McBride moves her twins from Vertigo, Tennessee to New York City, they wouldn't dream of leaving behind the family pig, Rumpy. But the posh hotel where Ellie has found work (and living space) has "No Pets" writ large on its portal.

Hello there. Welcome to my autobiography. Throughout this audiobook I talk about my life and work, including Little Britain, Come Fly with Me, Bridesmaids, Les Miserables, Alice in Wonderland and, of course, Shooting Stars. The thing is, this is a bit different to most memoirs you may have listened to, because it comes in the form of an A-Z. Anyway, I hope you buy it at least twice. Thank you.

What is a Buseyism? I take the letters that spell a word to create a definition for the word in the truth of its deeper, dimensional meaning. I weave in my personal anecdotes along with my musings on how I live life successfully according to my experiences. Who am I, a genius, a crazy madman, to give advice? This is not advice. I am sharing the life lessons I learned while surviving the ups and downs of almost 50 years in Hollywood, a near fatal motorcycle accident, a drug overdose, two divorces, bankruptcy and cancer in the middle of my face.

For more than 40 years—whether writing for Richard Pryor and Saturday Night Live or performing stand-up to sold-out crowds around the country—Paul Mooney has been provocative, incisive...and absolutely hilarious. His comedy has always been indisputably real and raw, reflecting race issues in America, and this fascinating, fearless new memoir continues that unapologetically candid tradition.

Discussion Materials gives the listener an honest look at Wall Street from someone in the trenches. After graduating from Columbia Business School, Bill Keenan joined Deutsche Bank's investment banking division as an associate where despotic superiors (and the blinking red light of his BlackBerry) instilled low-level terror on an hourly basis. You'll join him in his cubicle on the 44th floor of 60 Wall Street as he scrambles to ensure floating bar charts are the correct shade of orange and all numbers are left-aligned, but whatever you do, don't ask him what any of it means.

Chapters include, among others, “9 Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women,” "How to Ace Your Job Interview Without Over-acing It," and “Choose Your Own Adventure: Do You Want to Be Likable or Successful?” Each chapter also features an exercise with a set of "inaction items" designed to challenge women to be less challenging.

Roger Lewis, in his no-holds-barred biography, exposes a Peter Sellers the world little knows. Recognized as the greatest British comic since Charlie Chaplin, Sellers was the grand master of fifty-five films - from Dr. Strangelove, to Being There and the Pink Panther hits. But shadowing his phenomenal career was a history of increasingly bizarre behaviour involving psychotic violence, compulsive promiscuity, drug abuse and humiliating self-destructive obsessions with people including Princess Margaret, Sophia Loren, Liza Minnelli and each of his four wives.

By the tender age of five, Bernie Mac had found his calling: making others laugh. He has since become the star and cocreator of Fox’s hit sitcom The Bernie Mac Show; a stand-up legend; and a hit movie star in Head of State and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Now, this amazing comedian delves deep down inside to retell the poignant and hilarious story of his childhood and the people who helped shape him into the comedian - and the strong and self-reliant man - he is today.

Lauren Weedman is not okay. She's living what should be the good life in sunny Los Angeles. After a gig as a correspondent with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she scored parts in blockbuster movies, which led to memorable recurring roles on HBO's Hung and Looking. She had a loving husband and an adorable baby boy. In these comedic essays, she turns a piercingly observant, darkly funny lens on the ways her life is actually not okay.

The hilarious memoir from award-winning comedian Bridget Christie. When Bridget Christie walked into her local bookshop, she thought she'd come out with a book. And maybe a calendar of cute photos of cats (hopefully unlike you've just done). The last thing she thought she'd be leaving with was the need for a new wave of feminism and the start of an incredibly successful career.

A voice is calling across the land, "Bombardier Milligan." "Bombadier Milligan is dead," I replied in a disguised voice. The voice replied, "Then he's going to miss his breakfast." The fourth volume of Spike Milligan's legendary account of his time in the army during World War Two begins as he and his regiment land in sunny Italy in 1943 ("The ship touched the beach very gently, so gently I suspect it's not insured").

Blue Collar Comedy star Bill Engvall is just a guy. He's been one his whole life. He can't help it; he was born that way. And that makes him an expert on the subject. For the record, here's the official definition of a guy: a person who doesn't think before he speaks. He can't. He's not that deep. Because a guy has only three basic needs: eating, sleeping, and sex. That's it. Just a Guy chronicles a lifetime in pursuit of those needs.