Comedy Essays

Comedian and author of Birdie & Harlow @thedailytay shares an honest and hilarious essay collection on parenting young children, navigating social anxiety, and being a millennial woman. ""It's just a busy season,"" we say to ourselves after a chaotic morning (that we've had every day for the...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. From writer/director Cazzie David comes a series of acerbic, darkly funny essays about anxiety, social media, misanthropy, and growing up in a wildly eccentric family. For Cazzie David, the world is one big trap door leading to death and despair and social phobia...

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller Named a best book of the year by Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and Kirkus Reviews “One of the best books on politics our era will see . . . A book of astonishing literary quality.” —Matthew Parris, The TLS “[Rory Stewart] walked across Asia, served...

From Entertainment Weekly writer and debut author Samantha Highfill, a definitive and deliciously nostalgic look into the creation and legacy of the hit show The Vampire Diaries, as told by its cast, crew, and creators. In 2009, the CW released a show about grief, love, redemption, and, oh yeah...

Tucker Max graduated with high honors from the University of Chicago in 1998 and received an academic scholarship to Duke Law School, where he graduated in 2001, despite the fact that he spent part of one semester--while still enrolled in classes--living in Cancun. He took these degrees and set...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Being successful is no laughing matter . . . unless the road there is littered with flops, fool’s errands, fizzles, and straight-up failures—from the New York Times bestselling co-author of Marriage Be Hard. “I’m so happy Kev failed, because these stories...

A lively, hilarious, and entirely truthful look at the druggie side of history’s most famous figures, including Shakespeare, George Washington, the Beatles, and more Did you know that Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk and William Shakespeare was a stoner? Or how about the fact that Steve...

A celebration of the brave, drunken pioneers who built our civilization one seemingly bad decision at a time, A Brief History of Vice explores a side of the past that mainstream history books prefer to hide. History has never been more fun—or more intoxicating. Guns, germs, and steel might...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In this hilarious instant classic, the creator of The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood. “[Kaling is] like Tina Fey’s cool little sister. Or...

In the vein of Lebowitz's acclaimed Netflix limited series, Pretend It's a City—The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together two of the famed author's bestsellers, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies. In "elegant, finely honed prose" (The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the...

Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor. Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of...

Laugh till you cry in this new collection of stories from the “Serena Williams of humor writing” (New York Times Book Review) about raising babies and trying to learn how not to be one. Called a “comedic Godsend” by Conan O’Brien, and “the Stephen King of comedy writing” by John...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and creator of The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever comes a hilarious collection of essays about her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life. “This is Kaling at the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A sharp, funny grammar guide they’ll actually want to read, from Random House’s longtime copy chief and one of Twitter’s leading language gurus NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine Paste Shelf Awareness “Essential...

From her Academy Award—nominated screenplays to her bestselling fiction and essays, Nora Ephron is one of America’s most gifted, prolific, and versatile writers. In this classic collection of magazine articles, Ephron does what she does best: embrace American culture with love, cynicism, and...

Welcome to Chelsea Handler's world—a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense. When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power—vodka. Seems reasonable, when considering that she discovered her boyfriend was...

**Your Favorite Movies, Re-Watched** New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle's alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy returns to those...

With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life...

In a world yearning for meaning, the path to spiritual renewal may lie through the discipline and freedom that only hard work can show us. Life is hard in Attawapiskat. Outsiders see the poverty and despair, the sagging, mold-filled houses with generations packed into each one. The substance...

A rich, captivating, and darkly humorous look into the evolution of apocalyptic thought, exploring how film and literature interact with developments in science, politics, and culture, and what factors drive our perennial obsession with the end of the world. As Dorian Lynskey writes, “People...