Featured in the New York Times 2017 "Holiday Gift Guide for Hardcover Fans"Get an insider's oral history of the World's most iconic comedy club, featuring exclusive interviews with today's most hilarious stars recalling their time on stage (and off) at the Improv.In 1963, 30-year-old Budd Friedman—who had recently quit his job as a Boston advertising executive and returned to New York to become a theatrical producer—opened a coffee house for Broadway perfor...

In 1963, thirty-year-old Friedman—who had recently quit his job as a Boston advertising executive and returned to his hometown of New York to become a theatrical producer—opened a coffee house for Broadway performers called the Improvisation. His goal? Simply to make a living, and if all went according to plan, to also make enough professional contacts to be able to mount his first Broadway show within a year's time.Later shortened to the Improv, its first West 44th Street location...

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots—the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others.Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in t...

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our mi...

'Endlessly fascinating...meticulously written and thoroughly absorbing book' Financial Times'Eye-opening' Daily MailOut now: The gripping new book by the UK's most eminent forensic scientists, Angela Gallop__________CRIME [Noun]: An action or omission which constitutes an offence and is punishable by lawForensic scie...

The quintessential biography of Eve Babitz (1943-2021), the brilliant chronicler of 1960s and 70s Hollywood hedonism and one of the most original American voices of her time.“I practically snorted this book, stayed up all night with it. Anolik decodes, ruptures, and ultimately intensifies Eve’s singular irresistible glitz.” —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker“The Eve Babitz book I’ve been waiting for. What emerges isn’t just a p...

This program is read by the author.In Colin Quinn's new book, the popular comedian, social commentator, and star of the shows Red State Blue State and Unconstitutional tackles the condition of our union today.Utah: The Church of StatesVermont: The Old Hippie StateFlorida: The Hot Mess StateArizona: The Instagram Model StateWisconsin: The Diet Starts Tomorrow StateThe United States is in ...

A candid and eye-opening inside look at the final decades of Sinatra's life told by his longtime manager and friend, Eliot Weisman.By the time Weisman met Sinatra in 1976, he was already the Voice, a man who held sway over popular music and pop culture for forty years, who had risen to the greatest heights of fame and plumbed the depths of failure, all the while surviving with the trademark swagger that women pined for and men wanted to emulate. Passionate and gene...

"[Just] like reading a description of a Waters film is nothing like seeing it on the screen, listening to him tell his own stories brings the context and inflection needed to truly appreciate his art. A singular experience." — Booklist**This program is read by the author and includes a bonus conversation.No one knows more about everything—especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling—than John Waters.**The man in the pencil...

**This program is read by the author.A deeply-reported, riveting account of a cold case murder in Los Angeles, unsolved until DNA evidence implicated a shocking suspect – a female detective within the LAPD’s own ranks.**On February 24, 1986, 29-year-old newlywed Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in the home she shared with her husband, John. The crime scene suggested a ferocious struggle, and police initially assumed it was a burglary gone awry. Before her death, Sherri had con...

A top-secret manual for training CIA field agents in deception and sleight-of-hand was thought to be a rumor…until a single surviving copy was discovered in the agency’s archives.In 1953, a top-secret manual teaching agents sleight-of-hand and other deception techniques was written for the CIA by America’s then most famous magician. All copies were believed destroyed by the CIA’s purge of the infamous MKULTRA documents in 1973, and there was no proof of the manual’s existence . . ....

From Aristotle to Wittgenstein and Zizek, 50 Philosophy Classics provides a lively entry point to the field of philosophy. Analyses of key works by Descartes, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Heidegger, and Nietzsche also show how philosophy helped shape the thinking and events of the last 150 years. The list also includes 20th century greats including de Beauvoir, Foucault, Kuhn, and Sartre, along with contemporary philosophy including the writings and ideas of Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, Harry Frank...