Satire History

In 1729, Swift published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick known today as A Modest Proposal. In this satire, Swift grotesquely suggests how the poor could solve the problem of their numerous families which they are struggling to feed.

The vast right wing conspiracy has found its General Patton, and his name is David Kahane. Kahane's pseudonymous, satiric column for National Review Online, lampooning the Left via his Hollywood-radical persona - Stephen Colbert's liberal doppelganger - is must-listening for political aficionados of all stripes. Now, from the inside, Kahane proudly exposes the secret and not-so-secret winning strategies (and vulnerabilities) of the Left.

Two wealthy gentlemen decide to give a poor stranger a million-pound bank note to see what he will do with it. The results are very unexpected.

The dazzling, inimitable Molly Ivins is back with a new collection of withering and hilarious pieces on the worst politics has to offer. This audiobook features a rogue's gallery of politicians: everyone from George W. Bush and the Democratic presidential contenders to Arnold Schwarzenegger. This career retrospective contains Ivins's funniest, most outrageous (and outraged) work on "the best of the worst", in a volume sure to delight those on the left and infuriate the right.

In order to support her family and maintain their ancient castle in Lesser Hoo, 17-year-old Althea bears the burden of finding a wealthy suitor who can remedy their financial problems. But there are few wealthy suitors - or suitors of any kind--in Lesser Hoo. Then, the young and attractive (and very rich) Lord Boring arrives, and Althea sets her plans in motion. There's only one problem; his friend and business manager Mr. Fredericks keeps getting in the way. And, as it turns out, Fredericks has his own set of plans....

The History of England from Henry IV to Charles I, by a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian. N.B. There will be very few dates in this History! Jane Austen wrote The History of England in 1791, at the age of just 15, as a satirical parody of 18th-century historical textbooks. It pokes fun at the apparent impartiality of contemporary historians and contains more opinions about the monarchs’ relative characters than any facts or dates. The History of England was not published until 1922, more than a century after Austen’s death.

One: A time jumper is desperate to remain in this 'overlap' journey but his time is running out. Breaking his self-imposed travel rules, Marcus started a family. Now he will leave not only his deceased wife Ellie, again, but will also suffer the weight of a heart broken by being pulled from his children - unless he can find a way to extend his stay in the overlap.

In this satirical alternative history, Professor Jeronimo Herodotease and his team of documentary filmmakers and reenactors revivify the dark days of the Grim Depression and Amerika's descent into dictatorship. In the chaos and strife that followed the assassination of President-elect Frankie van Rosenvelt, General Jackson and a cadre of Forcist-minded cockroaches swarmed the stage, gnawed away at democratic norms, and declared martial law under the guise of restoring "Law and Order."

Alexandra Petri's US History contains a lost (invented!) history of America. (A history for people disappointed that the only president whose weird sex letters we have is Warren G. Harding.) Petri's "historical fan fiction" draws on real events and completely absurd fabrications to create a laugh-out-loud, irreverent takedown of our nation's complicated past. A witty, absurdist satire of the last 500 years, Alexandra Petri's US History is the fake textbook you never knew you needed.

In Max Barry's twisted, hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; The Police and The NRA are publicly-traded security firms. Jennifer Government is a Catch-22 for the New World Order, a satire both broad and pointed, deeply funny and disturbingly on-target.

Zombies vs. the KKK: The darkest hour in undead civil rights history. Allied Zombies for Peace covers the violent 42-minute time period that took place on November 11th, 1968, known as the Veterans Day Parade Massacre. This report outlines, according to eyewitnesses, the events that mark that day as a black stain on undead civil rights history. Violence explodes when a shot is fired during the 1968 Veterans Day Parade in Columbus, Ohio.

Richard Milhous Nixon lived one of the most improbable lives of the 20th century. He faced down the Russians, the Chinese, and, ultimately, his own government. The man went from political mastermind to a national joke, sobbing in the Oval Office, leaving us with one burning question: How could he have lost it all? Here, for the first time, is the tale told in his own words: the terrifying supernatural secret he stumbled upon as a young man, the truth behind the Cold War, and the truth behind the Watergate cover-up.

Five historical short stories with a pinch of parody and conspiracy theory twists....

He is the perfect presidential candidate. Conservatives love his hard-hitting Republican rsum. Liberals love his peaceful, progressive practicality. The media can’t get enough of his larger-than-life personality. And all the American people love that he’s an honest, hard-working man who tells it like it is. There’s just one problem. He is William Howard Taft...and he was already president a hundred years ago.

Thucydides, Gibbon, Tuchman, McCullough: to the names of the world's great historians must now be added the name of Dave Barry, who has taken a long, hard look at our new millennium (so far) and, when he stopped hyperventilating, has written it all down, because nobody would believe it otherwise.

Verbal abusers are highly intelligent people who tend to tell their victims what they want to hear in a caring way that allows the abuser to hide the true meaning of the message.

Following on the success of his first published novel, The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) published two short stories. With his farcical "burlesque autobiography", he describes a series of disreputable characters all of whom he claims were his ancestors. The second story, A Medieval First Romance, satirizes romance novels with a yarn about the cross-dressing daughter of a duke who thanks to her disguise is in line to inherit male privilege.

In one of the most well-known works of satire, Jonathan Swift puts forth a “modest proposal”. Swift begins by outlining the suffering that the starving beggars in Ireland experience daily. He paints a grim picture of the plight these people face to help the listener relate to the situation before turning the tables and suggesting that to alleviate the economic troubles of the poor, their children could be sold as food to the upper class. The shock from this sudden change is expounded by Swift’s continued explanation of the proposal.

Sewists, you deserve a good laugh. Beth is a former president of her local sewing guild and loves to sew. Rich has a lot of time on his hands after retiring early. Follow the humorous antics of these two as they adjust to his new found freedom. He wants to micromanage her days, and she just wants to sew! You’ll relate to their back and forth and chuckle at the anecdotes within. The only problem being how to put it down to get something else done, or finish work on a sewing project.

Mark Twain, incensed by increasing religious and political imperialism around the globe, characterizes a large nation's invasion and occupation of a smaller country as the "strange and over-showy onslaught of an elephant upon a nest of field mice, on the pretext that the mice had squeaked an insolence at him conduct which 'no self-respecting government could allow to pass unavenged' as Mr. Chamberlain said. Was that a good pretext in a small case when it had not been a good pretext in a large one?- for only recently Russia had affronted the elephant three times and survived...."