The funniest introduction to philosophy availableA New York Times Bestseller with over 300,000 copies sold worldwide'A hoot!' Times Literary SupplementHere’s an accusation – Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything.When it comes to language, it all depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.And one for the existentialists – you haven’t lived until you think about death all the time....

"It doesn't seem likely that a man would murder his wife and then just crawl back into bed and go to sleep, does it?"Elvis Presley is in Las Vegas for a little R&R before starting his next picture, Roustabout. But the King's work is never done. Before long, Elvis finds himself up to his neck in the hunt for a killer.A tourist turns up ritualistically murdered at one of Las Vegas's preeminent wedding chapels, and Elvis can't help f...

Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . has been a breakout bestseller ever since authors-and born vaudevillians-Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein did their schtick on NPR's Weekend Edition. Lively, original, and powerfully informative, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar..... is a not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical thinkers and traditions, from Existentialism (What do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?) to Logic (Sherlock Holmes never d...

As a young college student studying philosophy, Daniel Klein filled a notebook with short quotes from the world’s greatest thinkers, hoping to find some guidance on how to live the best life he could.Now, from the vantage point of his eighth decade, Klein revisits the wisdom he relished in his youth with this collection of philosophical gems, adding new ones that strike a chord.From Epicurus to Emerson and Marcus Aurelius to Peter Singer, each pithy extract is annotated wit...

Stoned out of his skull—this is how we find washed-up New York magazine writer Digby Maxwell when he is offered a last chance to redeem himself by becoming editor of a small philosophy magazine headquartered in a rural Vermont college town. Digby's assignment is to make the magazine relevant to contemporary culture. For starters, that requires several more tokes, very deep tokes.A wildly witty novel in the tradition of J. P. Donleavy and Nick Hornby, Nothing Serious

Our society worships at the fountain of youth, but are we missing out on an extraordinary stage in life? Daniel Klein ponders whether it is better to be forever young or to grin toothlessly and live an authentic old age. He journeys to the Greek island of Hydra to discover the secrets of ageing happily. Drawing on the lives of Greek locals, as well as philosophers, he uncovers the pleasures that are available only late in life.

When philosopher, jokester and septuagenarian Daniel Klein goes to the dentist for a regular check-up, he is informed that he needs a section of his lower teeth removed and replaced with either a denture plate or implants. The implants would require frequent trips to the dentist over the course of a year, a lot of money and a lot of pain. The denture plate on the other hand would leave Klein with the unmistakable clunky smile of an old man.Though Klein initially opts for the implan...

Schmegoogle: n. : a person so insignificant that if you Google his name, nothing comes up.Schmegoogle: Yiddish Words for Modern Times is a hilariously useful lexicon of neologisms that capture the flavor of life as we live it today.This clever book introduces more than 200 new terms rooted in real Yiddish, accompanied funny use-it-in-a-sentence examples and entertaining etymology.•...

Featuring Freud! Groucho Marx! Socrates! Lily Tomlin! Kierkegaard! Buddha! New Yorker cartoonists! Zombies! And of course, Heidegger!Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein first made a name for themselves with the outrageously funny New York Times bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. Now they turn their attention to the Big D and share the timeless wisdom of the great philosophers, theologians, psychotherapists and wiseguys.From angels to zombies and everythi...

What’s the best way to answer some of the biggest questions in life—questions like: Does God exist? What is the meaning of life? Is there a basic principle for all moral decisions? What is the best way to organise society? How do we know what is true? Are there limits to what we can know? Why do things exist? Is there life after death? Is there a design to the Universe? What is a ‘self’? What is beauty? What is humankind’s place in the cosmos?New York Times bestselling aut...

Murdering a man is a whole lot cheaper than paying him twenty grand.It's Memphis, 1965. Elvis passes his evenings at the movie-house, endlessly watching Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. His friends and hangers-on are starting to worry-and so is his famously hucksterish manager, Colonel Tom Parker.Things only get worse when the King finds out that someone has been disguising himself as Elvis in order to seduce his young female fans, and that Colonel Tom's...

Billy had said the word "murder". Worse, he'd said "serial murder". This was definitely not a game anymore.Back from his tour of duty in Germany-and desperately missing his Momma-Elvis Aron Presley just isn't turned on by the music the way he used to be. Between his Machiavellian manager, the hangers-on and childhood pals crowding his Graceland mansion, and his own propensity for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the King tries desperately to get his heart back in...