The Truth With Jokes

The #1 New York Times bestseller by Senator Al Franken, author of Giant of the Senate Senator Al Franken’s landmark bestseller, Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, was praised as a “bitterly funny assault” (The New York Times) that rang “with the moral clarity of an angel’s trumpet” (The Associated Press). Now, this master of political humor strikes again with a powerful and provocative message for all of us. In these pages, Senator Franken reveals the alarming story of how: • Bush (barely) beat Kerry with his campaign of “fear, smear, and queers,” and then claimed a nonexistent mandate. • “Casino Jack” Abramoff, the Republicans’ nearest and dearest friend, made millions of dollars off of the unspeakable misery of the poor and the powerless. And, also, Native Americans. • The administration successfully implemented its strategy to destroy America’s credibility and goodwill around the world. Complete with new material for this paperback edition, The Truth (with jokes) is more than just entertaining, intelligent, and insightful. It is at once prescient in its analysis of right-wing mendacity and incompetence, and inspiring in its vision of a better tomorrow for all Americans (except Jack Abramoff).

A follow up to Al Franken's worldwide bestseller LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM, this new book will expose the lies and deceptions of the politicians and the media in the runup to the 2004 presidential elections including Franken's comments on the results. Irreverent and audacious, Franken's inside track commentaries on the men and women who shape our world, are already reaching cult status in the UK.

Dangerous Jokes develops a new theory about how humor in ordinary conversations communicates prejudice and reinforces social hierarchies, drawing on the author's expertise in philosophy of language and on evidence from sociology, law and cognitive science. It explains why jokes are more powerful than ordinary speech at conveying demeaning messages, and it gives a new account of listening, addressing the morality of telling, listening to, being amused by, and laughing at demeaning jokes.

A work of political satire draws on a wide range of resources to expose the mendacity of the Bush administration and its conservative Republican supports.

This early work by Sigmund Freud was originally published in 1905 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious' is a psychological work on the effects on the mind of jokes. Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6th May 1856, in the Moravian town of Příbor, now part of the Czech Republic. He studied a variety of subjects, including philosophy, physiology, and zoology, graduating with an MD in 1881. Freud made a huge and lasting contribution to the field of psychology with many of his methods still being used in modern psychoanalysis. He inspired much discussion on the wealth of theories he produced and the reactions to his works began a century of great psychological investigation.

When E. B. White said “analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies,” he hadn’t seen Al Gini’s hilarious, incisive, and informative take on jokes, joke-telling, and the jokers who tell jokes. For Gini, humor is more than just foolish fun: it serves as a safety valve for dealing with reality that gives us the courage to endure that which we cannot understand or avoid. Not everyone tells jokes. Not everyone gets a joke, even a good one. But, Gini argues, joke-telling can act as both a sword and a shield to defend us from reality. As the late, great stand-up comic Joan Rivers put it: ‘If you can laugh at it, you can live with it!’ This book is for anyone who enjoys a good laugh, but also wants to know why.

The 'Harold', an innovative improvisational tool, helped many actors on the road to TV and film stardom, including George Wendt (Norm on Cheers). Now it is described fully in this new book for would-be actors and comics. The 'Harold' is a form of competitive improv involving 6 or 7 players. They take a theme suggestion from the audience and 'free associate' on the theme into a series of rapid-fire one-liners that build into totally unpredictable skits with hilarious results. The 'Harold' is a fun way to 'loosen up' and learn to think quickly, build continuity, develop characterisations and sharpen humour.