Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Comedy & Humor

When Dave Barry writes funny, you write back. And when you write funny, Dave Barry talks back! Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist Dave Barry gets more response from readers than any other writer in the United States. And now the absolute best of Dave Barry is available, complete with those items sent in by Dave's legion of Alert Readers all across the country. But Dave Barry doesn't only talk back to readers. He talks back to traffic cops, dentists, doctors, Congress, and his very dumb dogs.

In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart.

Here is the absolute best of Dave Barry; selections from four of his most popular books, including the hilarious Guide to Guys. Dave Barry is on the loose and no one is safe....

More than once, friends of Carl Reiner said, “You ought to write those things down.” And at the age of eighty, Carl finally did. In this funny and engaging memoir, Reiner recounts his show business life in short comic takes....

Fed up with the Republican Right? Then you'll love Al Franken's scathingly hilarious look at America's largest talk show host and his conservative cronies. Funny yet uncompromisingly fair, Franken tackles the issues - and the politicians - in ways few have dared.

In yet another collection of essays, investigative journalist Dave Barry is on the job, hard at work between lunch and naps researching and compiling out-of-the-ordinary news stories from his legion of loyal followers all across the country. Reported as only Dave's wit and wisdom can accomplish, Barry covers everything from exploding municipal toilets to spontaneous human combustion (over 200 cases) to humor impairment—citing Exhibit A, former President Richard Nixon. No one is exempt: Barry lambasts traffic cops, dentists, doctors, Congress, and his very dumb dogs.

Conspiracy buff or not, who can resist a book that blows the lid off some of our time's most controversial issues? For example, if astronauts, pilots, and nearly every culture since time immemorial believe UFOs exists, why does the U.S. government deny it? And just how could the President of the United States die of a frontal would inflicted by a sniper shooting from behind?

Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus is a hysterical compilation of the outrageous columnist's best pieces. Read all about Dave's unfortunate Wheel of Fortune appearance, his "non-lunch" with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and much more from a guy who knows where he's coming from.

Here are the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale — a young film star and drug addict — who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands.

While sifting through closets of junk in the mansion they have rented, Qwill and Koko uncover a mystery involving the suicide of the former owner and the murder of a potato farmer. By the author of The Cat Who Wasn't There.

Just what is it that they don't want you to know about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Area 51, and the mysterious “face” on Mars? In UFOs, JFK, and Elvis, Richard Belzer delivers a witty rant on some of the biggest conspiracies and cover-ups this side of Roswell. With a deft and entertaining combination of satire and in-your-face facts, Belzer challenges his audience to accept the extent of alleged government cover-ups. Finally, one lone “nut” exposes the conspiracy to keep conspiracies a dirty little secret, standing up to the shadowy forces.

Without bothering to get approval from the President, the State Department, or even the FTC, Dave Barry's publishers sent him to Tokyo. You'd think they would have known better. Now the word is Barry has set back our diplomatic relations with the whole Pacific Rim by a couple of decades. Japanese culture, dining, sport, and industry all come under Barry's relentless scrutiny.

Toward the end of the 18th century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates savannas and jungle, travels down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space is curved.

Imagine this: When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you — an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker — are convinced that you're facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you must scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there's no way you can anticipate the baffling disappearance of a 300-pound psychic, the fall from grace of a born-again monkey, or the intrusion in your life of a tattooed stranger intent on blowing your mind and most of your fuses.

Sissy Hankshaw, an almost flawlessly beautiful small-town girl with big-time dreams, hitchhikes her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bag in Tom Robbins's magical, funny, and most famous novel. Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.

Political provocateur Bill Maher tells it like it is in a useful and hilarious guide for the many Americans who want to do more here at home to help in the war effort, but are at a loss as to how. Says Maher, "Traveling the country, I find that people want to do more here at home, but are at a loss as to what. Even when the government issues a Terrorism Advisory, it's maddeningly vague - 'Terrorist alert today! Code Burnt Orange!' 'And what?' I always want to ask, "Bring a sweater?'"

Tupperware ladies, eighties people, and leisure concept salesmen beware: Dave Barry is on the loose and no one is safe! In this collection of eighty essays, the inimitable columnist observes everything that makes America the unique, special place you've grown to love: taxes, toilets, airbags, baseball, beer commercials, and numerous other American artifacts.

Yes, it's true: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dave Barry's columns get out of the paper and sent around more than those of any other columnist in America. Join Dave as he runs for president, plays Claptonesque guitar in the world's most literary band (The Rock-Bottom Remainders), and gets the real scoop on all those UFO sightings. Warning: Dave Barry has a knack for giving his readers a few laughs and lots of expensive merchandise (ordered from the Home Shopping Club). No, we're not making this up!

The creator and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond dissects the art of comedy and the making of a sitcom classic. In television, where programs can premiere and disappear in the same week, Everybody Loves Raymond reigned as America's best-loved show for nine years with more than 17 million viewers. As the number-one sitcom, it received more than 70 Emmy nominations, including two wins for best comedy.

The Expo begins with a literal bang: a bomb wrecks the hotel, killing a housekeeper and causing extensive damage. Luckily for Pickax, Qwill is on the scene, his moustache twitching with suspicions that this bomb was intended as something stronger than a warning to someone. His evidence: Koko and Yum Yum's new interest in cheese, especially Gruyere, Brie and Feta. Qwill and the Siamese are on a case that will demand all their feline intuition and mustachioed insight!