How To Attract The Wombat

A survey of the animal kingdom in which the nocturnal and tunneling wombat is awarded the greatest praise. Will Cuppy was something like the Larry David of the mid-20th century. From his perch as a staff writer at The New Yorker, Cuppy observed the world and found a great deal that annoyed him. This collection of essays on animals includes "Birds Who Can't Even Fly," "Optional Insects," "Octopuses and Those Things", and "How to Swat a Fly," which codifies the essentials in ten hilarious principles. And three essays on wombats. Perfect reading for the perplexed, befuddled, and perpetually irritated.

Four pop-up games in this book: The Golden Apple, Apollo & Python, Hades & Persephone, and Hermes & the Monster Argus. Includes an attached 14-pages reading book telling the stories of the myths, an integrated spinner, and storage pocket. Educational and fun—and perfect for traveling.

Back in the golden age of humor books (late 1920s-early 1950s), when wits of the pantheon like Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and S.J. Perelman were producing their signature works, there was another singular satirist who more than held his own with such fast company: Will Cuppy (1884-1949). This factual funnyman's metier is dark comedy that flirts with nihilism. His agenda is baldly stated in such classic Cuppy book titles as How to Be a Hermit (1929), How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931), and The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950). This biography doubles as a critical study of a satirist whose shish-kebabing of humanity was often done through the veiled anthropomorphic use of animals. For a biographer, Will Cuppy represents a treasure trove of possibilities. He was a great humorist, and most of his best work is still in print, but until now he has never been the subject of a book-length study. His mesmerizingly complex and eccentric private life almost trumps the comic accomplishments of his public persona.

A survey of life on earth, in all its variety and pagentry, by a very annoyed humorist. From early man, the Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, to irascible observations on mankind and the animal kingdom today (including "Birds I Could Do Without"), Will Cuppy, a perennially perturbed hermit, is your guide in these are very funny essays. For eight years, from 1921 to 1929, Will Cuppy lived alone on Jones Island, off Long Island's South Shore. From that outpost, he gained a reputation for his factual but funny magazine articles and wrote the book, How to be a Hermit, his first bestseller. His last, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, was left unfinished after Cuppy's death in 1949 and has become a classic of American humor. In between (among other titles) was this very funny collection. First published in 1931, the subjects include "What I Hate About Spring," "Awful Mammals," and "Why Be a Rhinoceros?" Great for anyone who loves classic American humor.

On the surface, it doesn't appear as if much in Excel 2003 has changed. There are a handful of new objects and the user interface is largely the same. But beyond a superficial glance, you'll see that there are fundamental shifts implied by the new features: Lists, XML, web services, .NET, and InfoPath build a framework for entirely new ways to exchange data with Excel. In fact, that's much of what Excel 2003 is all about--solving problems that deal with teamwork-- collecting and sharing data, programming across applications, and maintaining security.The latest in our Developer's Notebook series, this guide introduces intermediate to advanced Excel VBA programmers to the newest programming features of Excel 2003,--focusing just on what's new--so you can get up to speed quickly. Light on theory and long on practical application, the book takes you directly to the topics you'll want to master through a series of hands-on projects. With dozens of practical labs, you'll be able to decide for yourself which new aspects of Excel will be useful or not in your own work. And best of all, you won't have to buy an expensive revision of a legacy Excel programming tutorial to learn about the new features--if they're covered there at all.Excel 2003 Programming: A Developer's Notebook shows you how to work with lists and XML data, secure Excel applications, use Visual Studio Tools for Office, consume Web Services, and collect data with Infopath. Each chapter is organized into a collection of labs, each of which addresses a specific programming problem. You can follow along to complete the lab on your own, or jump ahead and use the samples the author has built for you.The new Developer's Notebooks series from O'Reilly covers important new tools for software developers. Emphasizing example over explanation and practice over theory, they focus on learning by doing--you'll get the goods straight from the masters, in an informal and code-intensive style that suits developers. If you've been curious about Excel 2003, but haven't known where to start, this no-fluff, lab-style guide is the solution.

Five short stories depict love, misfortune and the challenge of midwestern life.