Humor Classics

Flatlandia fu scritto nel 1888 da Edwin Abbott Abbott. Il racconto, fantastico, racconta la vita di un abitante di un ipotetico universo bidimensionale che entra in contatto con l'abitante di un universo tridimensionale. È un racconto che affronta da un punto di vista della matematica e della geometria il tema della multidimensionalità dell'universo.

Voltaire's Candide can only be described as a satirical novella that was intended to attack the optimistic and backwards way of thinking that was common during the 18th century. Filled with absurd and darkly humorous content, the short work is a highly debatable and thought-provoking piece. The story centers around Candide, the nephew of a baron, who's teacher, Pangloss, teaches Candide that the world is the way it should be and that everything in it is good.

This collection contains 12 of the greatest shows ever broadcast during the Golden Age of Radio - including episodes of The Jack Benny Program, Burns & Allen, Gunsmoke, The Amos ‘N’ Andy Show, Philip Marlowe, The Green Hornet, X Minus One, Sherlock Holmes and many others. Radio’s finest actors perform before the microphones, including: Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Groucho Marx, Ozzie Nelson, Harriet Hilliard, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Jim and Marian Jordan, Hal Peary, Eve Arden, George Burns, Gracie Allen and many more.

Satirical humor from the master. A group of congressmen are trapped in a snowbound train for two months. When they run out of food, they do what congressmen do - they form a committee to decide who among them should be eaten first.

Im zweiten Teil von Mark Twains Bericht über seine Reisen in Europa geht es in die Schweiz. Zwar liegt das, was der Autor dort beschreibt, gut 120 Jahre zurück, aber manches hat durchaus Wiedererkennungswert...

Moriae encomium, zu Deutsch: Lob der Torheit (oder Lob der Narrheit), ist der Titel eines der bekanntesten Werke des niederländischen Humanisten Erasmus von Rotterdam. Das Werk, ein herausragendes, zu seiner Zeit wirkmächtiges Beispiel der Narrenliteratur, ist auch als Laus stultitiae bekannt. Es wurde eines der meistgelesenen Bücher der Weltliteratur und wurde schon zu Lebzeiten des Erasmus in viele europäische Sprachen übersetzt, denn Satiren waren in der Renaissance die bevorzugte Literatur der Gebildeten.

The Wonderful Visit tells the story of an angel who finds himself unexpectedly marooned on Earth. Wells used John Ruskin's remark that an angel appearing on earth in Victorian England would be shot on sight as the inspiration for this tale of a celestial being who is completely out of place in human society. Ironically, the angel's first confidant and protector is a clergyman, who never recovers from the eventual and inevitable disappearance of the angel. Wells dwells in detail on the contrast between the idealism of the celestial visitor and the discourtesy of his hosts.

Gappers will get your goat. Literally. If you don't brush them off and return them to the ocean, these bright orange, many-eyed creatures will cover your goats, and the goats will stop giving milk. In a village called Frip, goat's milk was the entire economy. Three families lived there - the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her widowed father, who wanted everything to remain the same. It didn't. One day, the Gappers decided for a good reason to concentrate on Capable's goats. Oh, how the Romos and Ronsens turned their backs on the gapper-ridden Capable!

Jacob Greene was a sweet boy raised by a loving, tight-knit family... of cultists. He always obeyed, and was so trusted by them that he was the one they sent out on their monthly supply run (food, medicine, pig fetuses, etc.). Finding himself betrayed by them, he flees the family's sequestered compound and enters the true unknown: college in New York City. It's a very foreign place, the normal world and St. Mark's University. And then his estranged sister arrives in town to kick off the apocalypse....

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse fu un umorista inglese dalla prolifica produzione di racconti e romanzi. Il suo tratto delicato e leggero è inconfondibile, oltre che l’ambientazione dei suoi romanzi, che si svolgono spesso nella pacifica campagna inglese, in un mondo quasi irreale.

Lord Tomlin is a bachelor, but he won't be for long if his overbearing aunt has anything to say about it. She's picked out a potential mate with an "acceptable" bloodline, but Tomlin has his eye on a pretty young acolyte who recently arrived at the castle. A mercenary army is encamped outside the gates, threatening to attack at any moment. And of course there’s a barrel of magic pickles…

This selection of hilarious short stories takes the habitually clueless Bertie Wooster to New York. Thankfully, his faithful butler, Jeeves, is along to straighten out the wickets when they get a bit sticky, don't you know. Selections include "Leave It To Jeeves", "Extricating Young Gussie", "Jeeves Takes Charge", "Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg", "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest", "Jeeves and the Chump Cyril", and "The Aunt and the Sluggard".

The Freaks of Mayfair by E.F. Benson is a series of satirical sketches introducing us to some bizarre inhabitants of Edwardian High Society of Mayfair, which was, and still is today, the stamping ground of the very wealthy. Each sketch introduces a different type of "freak". Sir Louis and Lady Mary Marigold turn snobbism into fine art; Sarah Whitehand is the social-climbing wife of an American toilet bowl magnate, and the so-called "Grizzly Kittens", Babs Begum and Charlie Gordon, cling desperately to their youth as they totter toward old age.

An Georg Christoph Lichtenberg kam vor mehr als 200 Jahren nichts unkommentiert vorbei - weder eine mathematische Formel noch eine Alltagsbeobachtung. Der studierte Physiker, Mathematiker und Astronom konnte komplexe Zusammenhänge anschaulich zuspitzen. In seinen "Sudelbüchern" notierte er Tausende davon. Heute gilt Lichtenberg nicht nur als einer der originellsten Köpfe des 18. Jahrhunderts, sondern auch als Begründer des modernen deutschen Aphorismus. Baldur Seifert liest "Aus den Sudelbüchern", die bis heute nichts von ihrem Witz und Scharfsinn verloren haben.

As Jeeves and Bertie fall out over the latter's new white mess jacket, the young master takes exception to Jeeves' handling of the romantic affairs of newt enthusiast Gussie Fink-Nottle and assumes personal charge of the case. But Bertie's schemes soon expand to encompass the ruptured engagement of his cousin Angela and Tuppy Glossop, and the financial problems of his Aunt Dahlia - leading to unforeseen difficulties with Aunt Dahlia's peerless French chef, the temperamental Monsieur Anatole.

The Brass Bottle is the story of an architect who bought an antique brass bottle to give to a professor dealing in Mideast antiquities. After the purchase, the architect’s curiosity was aroused, and he removed the stopper in the bottle. And when he did, a big cloud of smoke was released, producing a major surprise when a genie emerged. His name was Fakrash el-Aamash, and he turned out to be a fairy-tale-type character who wound up trying to repay the architect, Horace Ventimore, for giving him release from what amounted to a brass prison.

Vier Klassiker des Humors geben sich die Ehre...

Master wit Mark Twain selected these 27 stories himself by 15 of his favorite 19th-century authors. The order follows that which Twain placed them in in the original anthology, published in 1888. He indulged his comic fancy rather than making a textbook in which all themes or authors are placed together, saying that "This way you will have to peruse the whole thing before discovering that one of your favorites is not included." Among others, you'll find: Artemus Ward, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Francis Lee Pratt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frederick W. Cozzens, and Twain himself.

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters and depicts issues of marriage, gender, age, and social status.

L'ultimo romanzo di Pirandello, il romanzo "più amaro di tutti, profondamente umoristico, di scomposizione della vita" come affermò lo stesso autore.