Essays Books - Page 6

Letters from a Nut

Ted L. Nancy, Jerry Seinfeld

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Total reviews: 129 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Who is Ted L. Nancy?
He's a concerned hotel guest searching for a lost tooth...

He's a superstitious Vegas high-roller who wants to gamble at a casino in his lucky shrimp outfit...

He's the genius inventor of "Six Day Underwear"...

He's a demanding dramatist seeking an audience for his play about his 26-year-old dog, Cinnamon...

He's the proud owner of Charles, a 36-year-old cat who owes his longevity to a pet food company...

He's a loyal fan of the King of Tonga...

He is, in reality, a twisted prankster -- a supremely off-kilter alter ego who sends patently ridiculous letters and queries to (and receives surprisingly earnest responses back from) corporate honchos, entertainment conglomerates, national publications, politicians, celebrities and heads of state to everyone, in fact, from the president of the Bon Ami Cleanser Company to U.S. Vice President Al Gore.  

Letters From A Nut is an insanely inspired, truly madcap collection of Nancy correspondence, a laugh-out-loud-in-public-places aggregation of official -- and officially certifiable -- requests, complaints, fan mail and questions that could not possibly have been taken seriously...but, amazingly, were!

Dear Mr. Nancy:"It is not often that we receive such enthusiastic support for the paper bag." --The Paper Bag Council

"On behalf of Greyhound, there should be no problem traveling while in your butter costume." --Greyhound Bus Lines

"I look forward to working with you to create a better future for this great nation." -- Vice President Al Gore

"An unending stream of some of the most hilarious exchanges I've ever read. Everyone I lent this book to just read it and laughed out loud like I did. It's so simple, yet totally inventive. I'm sure some sort of mail fraud charges could be brought to stop this man but, personally, I hope they never catch him." --Jerry Seinfeld

Eats, Shoots & Leaves Illustrated Edition

Lynne Truss

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Editorial Review:

Now in a handsome, hilariously illustrated new edition: The stickler-tickling punctuation polemic that has sold more than 1.6 million copies in North America is even more fun with the whimsical art of acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist Pat Byrnes.

The runaway bestseller that has everyone minding their p’s and q’s (and their commas and semicolons), Eats, Shoots & Leaves has delighted audiences around the world and elevated Lynne Truss to superstickler status among those in the know. Language lovers everywhere will cheer the arrival of this new edition, beautifully packaged in a larger format with a red cloth-over-board cover and containing more than fifty vivid, full-color drawings. Created by renowned cartoonist Pat Byrnes, each illustration brings to life a different punctuation pitfall in a wickedly playful style that matches Truss’s trademark wit. Eats, Shoots & Leave Illustrated Edition is also accompanied by a colorful foreword by wordsmith extraordinaire Frank McCourt.

Published just in time for holiday gift-giving, Eats Shoots & Leaves Illustrated Edition is sure to be at the top of wish lists coast to coast.

On The Wealth of Nations (Books That Changed the World)

P. J. O'Rourke

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Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

As one of the first titles in Atlantic Monthly Press’ “Books That Changed the World” series, America’s most provocative satirist, P. J. O’Rourke, reads Adam Smith’s revolutionary The Wealth of Nations so you don’t have to. Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long:  the original edition totaled over nine hundred pages in two volumes—including the blockbuster sixty-seven-page “digression concerning the variations in the value of silver during the course of the last four centuries,” which, “to those uninterested in the historiography of currency supply, is like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu.” Although daunting, Smith’s tome is still essential to understanding such current hot-topics as outsourcing, trade imbalances, and Angelina Jolie. In this hilarious, approachable, and insightful examination of Smith and his groundbreaking work, P. J. puts his trademark wit to good use, and shows us why Smith is still relevant, why what seems obvious now was once revolutionary, and why the pursuit of self-interest is so important.

Who Cut the Cheese: A Cultural History of the Fart

Jim Dawson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

What a Piece of Work is Man! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

There is a line in an Eddie Murphy stand up routine from the 80's where he says "It's the fart game son you'll play it one day". I picked up this book because frankly I am a gaseous girl, who grew up playing the fart game in my house. My father used to lock the windows to our station wagon and made us guess what he had for breakfast, my sisters used to hold me down and poot in my face, we all did the pull my finger joke and we had our own names for the act:

The Barking Spider, "just stepped on a frog", Chocolate Zephyr, Rumbling Paducah, A Howdy, Perfwanky, Beefed, cat food pancake.

This book is like a bible for me, a reference book, and the encyclopedia fartanica if you will. It isn't just a book that you might put in someone's Christmas stocking to get a guffaw "oh look uncle bob got a book from Santa on farting, what a gas!"
It's full of literary references, Shakespearean sonnets, historical data, scientific facts, myths and legends, all you ever wanted to know but they never taught you in 5th grade biology! Besides all the learning you will accomplish, it's also just a funny read and that's really what the game is all about.

Editorial Review:

A cut above anything else on the subject, this book gets to the bottom of thesubject of flatulence with facts and humor.

NPR Driveway Moments All About Animals: Radio Stories That Won't Let You Go (Npr Driveway Moments)

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Stories from the National Public Radio archives celebrate our relationship with our furry, feathered, and sometimes scaly friends.

What’s a "driveway moment"? It's when you're so captivated by a story you're hearing on NPR that you stay in your car to hear it to the end—even if you're sitting in your driveway with the motor running. For years, listeners have written to NPR to describe such moments. Now animal lovers especially will want to make sure their tanks are full.

Meet a dog who's addicted to toads, a chatty parrot who tells the truth, the Stupid Pet Tricks coordinator for the Late Show with David Letterman, and a professional dog walker whose day features 14 canines and a lot of fresh air. Learn about a dog's life in Vietnam (where dog meat is a delicacy) and the heartrending search for lost pets following Hurricane Katrina. Visit a retirement community for thoroughbred racehorses and the Wait Wait petting zoo, where cows moo with British accents and mice dislike cheese. Bid farewell to a cat named Miss Pudding and welcome three orphaned hummingbirds home.

Heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, and Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me!, hosted by Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep, these stories will make you laugh out loud and shed a tear or two.

Car Talk Field Guide to the North American Wacko

Tom Magliozzi

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A radio road trip across America featuring the wackiest calls from the nuttiest specimens ever to phone the show.

A high point of every Car Talk show is the call-in segment, when listeners phone in for advice and regale hosts Click and Clack with tales of their own automotive misadventures.

Like Dave from Bemidji, Minnesota, who drives his Chevy Cavalier home from Alaska when it already has 350,000 miles on the odometer. And Dinesh, who strolls across Death Valley. Rather than worry about buzzards, he's concerned about how his car will hold up in the heat. Christy wants to know if she fried her dad's Citation. Adrienne frets that a load of rocks might crush her Saab. Single guy John wonders if he should tidy up his car for a first date or reveal its trashy self. And when Ann's husband travels from Georgia to Florida to get his vasectomy reversed, Ann drives like a banshee to bring him back home. Ever since, their Caravan makes strange grinding noises.

It seems that lunatics aren't confined to Car Talk Plaza. They're everywhere, and they're dialing the phone. Four hilarious radio shows celebrate the land of the free, home of the wacko.