AK-47 in a Wild Why World is a collection of essays on political and socio-economic condition of the Modern Africa, humour and poetry with a nationalistic touch. The approach, very blunt and sometimes acerbic. The book argues about an unknown fear trapped in the heart of every black African with a vicious grip on 3 out of every 5; the thought of a life wasted under economic hardship, a scary and degenerating environmental nightmare, the scare from an imaginary superior powers chained in a grander fear of losing political and vain physical relevance, the fear of a hell, a hell of poverty and misery influenced by ignorance, greed and crass illiteracy. According to the author, to run away from this fear, a great conflict ensued, a conflict of the soul and self in the midst of a society gone wild with itself. In the madness of this self induced conflict emerges a great run that has set every black African on a race out of motherland to cold places of comfort - A spider web comfort. The book states categorically that unless the black African sit down and address the myriads of problems plaguing the entire continent, and build a positive cultural and economic system the great Africa will spiral into further darkness. The idea of humour laced into this frank discussion according to the author is only to remind us that we are living in a world that is getting hostile every minute of the day, unintelligent arguments, misunderstandings, strife and things that are insane to ever imagine we could do to each other. Humour is that idea that reminds us that all the struggles leads nowhere but more struggles and stress. The only way to prove that vanity of life is to find time to share some joy.

It's common knowledge that parenting isn't an easy task; would be much easier if directions were attached to each child. In Conversations with My Daughter, author Robert Veres takes a humorous approach to child rearing as he applies a firm, wise hand to the parenting tiller.

Veres shares imagined parent-child dialogues aimed at helping parents understand exactly what to say when confronted with the many difficult or unexpected situations they are likely to experience. In this hilarious guide, a father matches wits with his daughter, drawing conversations from every stage of life-from the battle over bedtime and the candy counter at the grocery store to driving off inappropriate (or scary) boyfriends to selecting the right college-along with everything in between.

Seeking to raise the quality of parenthood around the globe, "Conversations with My Daughter" captures some of the truly inspirational thoughts, wise sayings, and observations that can help parents guide children through the turbulence of adolescence-and provides everyone with a few laughs along the way.

Emerging from a very protective, strictly Catholic, middle class family, Henry is equipped with a bachelor's degree, and an attache case when he enters the world of work. Lessons including tax avoidance, tax evasion, loneliness and blackmail are soon some of the problems he faces. Those plus a few years of military service convince him that his first love must be teaching. In the public schools, new words enter his vocabulary and he faces new challenges. In a small, conservative school, these battles center around the Who, What, Where, When and How of journalism. The problems are who may a new teacher date, what teaching methods are allowed, where may a new teacher live and drink, when must a new teacher be home and how long will the students and parents continue to educate him. The problems and vocabulary change when Henry signs a contract to teach in a large, metropolitan high school in Nevada. Now there are lessons to be learned about theft, wedding chapels, prostitution, Keno, legal guardianship, child neglect, child abuse, parole, comps and under cover police acting as students. On the other side of the coin are lessons in trust, love, scholarships, financial aid, advanced placement, real estate and fellow teachers to add humor and understanding to all the problems. The thirty year run in education is a rewarding, challenging, enjoyable and humorous life. With those lessons learned, he feels prepared for retirement.

"Wriggly Rex" is the funniest Senate candidate who ever battled a strait-laced young staffer, a bare-knuckled opponent, and Old Beelzebub-all at once: an alcoholic lecher or a lecherous alcoholic, depending on his company and the time of day.

Idealistic young aide Ernst Funck thinks that electing a conservative is a dream job. But nothing could have prepared him for Rex's string of embarrassing disasters.

When Rex holds a drunken press conference to roast his supporters and the press, Ernst realizes that he can't win the election without controlling Rex.

Buck Cheatem, the oil millionaire who funded Rex's campaign, wants his money back if Rex loses. Freddy Farnarkler, the conservative think tanker, wants a deeper relationship. The Rat Squad makes an evil appearance.

Bunny, the office manager, is an equal-opportunity destroyer-her wheelchair a battle chariot. Porky, the campaign strategist, makes Ernst a rival. Rex's wife Blanche and girlfriend Angel both work in the campaign, as if Ernst needed another problem.

Will Ernst pull out a win in spite of Rex? Or will he have to find that witness protection program for losing campaign staffers? Their final confrontation provides the answer.

Discover all the foul facts about the history of swashbuckling buccaneers with history's most horrible headlines: Pirates edition. The master of making history fun, Terry Deary, turns his attention to seafaring pirates. From how to talk the patter of a pirate and the disgusting details of death by a thousand cuts to which potty pirate hacked off his enemy's own ears and made him eat them. It's all in Horrible Histories: Pirates: fully illustrated throughout and packed with hair-raising stories - with all the horribly hilarious bits included with a fresh take on the classic Horrible Histories style, perfect for fans old and new the perfect series for anyone looking for a fun and informative read Horrible Histories has been entertaining children and families for generations with books, TV, stage show, magazines, games and 2019's brilliantly funny Horrible Histories: the Movie - Rotten Romans. Get your history right here and collect the whole horrible lot. Read all about it!

Dorothy Parker holds a place in history as one of New York's most beloved writers. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, the public is invited to enjoy Mrs. Parker's sharp wit and biting commentary on the Jazz Age hits and flops in this first-ever published collection of her groundbreaking Broadway reviews.Starting when she was twenty-four at Vanity Fair as New York's only female theatre critic, Mrs. Parker reviewed some of the biggest names of the era: the Barrymores, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, Helen Hayes, Al Jolson, Eugene O'Neil, Will Rogers, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Her words of praise--and contempt--for the dramas, comedies, musicals, and revues are just as fresh and funny today as they were in the age of speakeasies and bathtub gin. Annotated with a notes section by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, the volume shares Parker's outspoken opinions of a great era of live theatre in America, from a time before radio, talking pictures, and television decimated attendance. Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918-1923 provides a fascinating glimpse of Broadway in its Golden Era and literary life in New York through the eyes of a renowned theatre critic.

Ripley's Believe It or Not! 2022 is sure to amaze and astound children and adults alike with thousands of strange stories, unusual feats and hair-raising oddities from around the world. Meet the man who has made a model of the Empire State Building - in cheese. Marvel at the heart-warming story of the dog that adopted five kittens. Read all about the curse of OEtzi, the five-thousand-year-old iceman mummy. Be amazed by the strange and extraordinary sea creatures that create their own light. Bursting with brilliant facts, fantastic stories and eye-popping photographs, this all-new edition of Ripley's will entertain, inform and flabbergast you. No Christmas is complete without it.

Real life is the birthplace of the best stories. The tales related in Lines From the Times are drawn from real life. Lacking the length of a short story, these tales are pithy reflections on life as it is encountered by the author. From a little girl's conversation on a park bench, a grown man flying a kite in the church yard, a daughter's attempts to rein in an indulgent grandfather, a homeless man or a drug-influenced woman seeking direction, an adventure getting children off to school, strangers passed along life's journey, all combine to entertain and delight. These are not sermons by any means, but hey are parables of life where one finds a lesson taught, a prejudice challenged or a value uplifted. Lines From the Times is a mirror held up to our age reflecting our beauty and our blemishes. There's love in these pages; there's sadness for love not shown. There's acceptance here; there's rejection. We can find ourselves tucked inside the stories, ourselves at our best and at our worse.

The first of its kind to explore the Nobel Prize experience

"Dad, some guy is calling from Sweden." It was 2:30am on October 13th, 1998, the youngest son in the Laughlin house had answered the phone. His dad had just become a recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics.

Frantic and funny events of the next two months are chronicled as the Laughlin's academic household morphs into a madcap staging area for the family and thirty guests who will be in attendance during Nobel week. From tickets to Stockholm to clothing measurements, Nobel lecture preparations, attach assistance and a quick trip to the White House for a formal reception with President and Mrs. Clinton, readers will laugh out loud while gasping in awe.

The glorious Nobel ceremony and elaborate banquet is held each winter with a viewing audience of tens of millions. An intimate dinner with King Gustaf in his royal palace follows the Nobel evening in which Anita Laughlin finds herself the King's dinner partner for what becomes an evening of hilarious surprises, and yes, reindeer.

This book is laced with cartoons drawn by Bob Laughlin that evoke collective feelings of surprise and bewilderment as he and his wife ascend the steep learning curve of Swedish protocol together.

Dr. Kuhn has written a book about her life and travels as a foreign language teacher. In essence, it is a book of memories, autobiographical in nature. She describes many of the 45 trips in detail, but she also groups many of the trips togeher. In 1973 when she began taking students to Europe, she had a good background of working with students and knowing how they think and act. (or so she thought) There is an interesting list of things to take, where to put the items, where they can be bought and the prices of the items. There is also a list of personal rules and regulations that were required of all students. They were called Mademoiselle's Rules or Mlle's Rules. Then there is a comprehensive list of Trip Procedures, giving all the do's and don't's of traveling. Students were allowed to "sample" beer and alcohol as long as their parents had signed a permission slip, but students will always try to outthink the teacher and circumvent the procedures. Dr. Kuhn describes many of the things that went wrong on both student trips and adult trips, along with things that didn't seem funny at the time, but in retrospect seem humorous today.

WINNER OF THE THURBER PRIZE

The compelling, inspiring, (often comic) coming-of-age story of Trevor Noah, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

One of the comedy world's brightest new voices, Trevor Noah is a light-footed but sharp-minded observer of the absurdities of politics, race and identity, sharing jokes and insights drawn from the wealth of experience acquired in his relatively young life. As host of the US hit show The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, he provides viewers around the globe with their nightly dose of biting satire, but here Noah turns his focus inward, giving readers a deeply personal, heartfelt and humorous look at the world that shaped him.

Noah was born a crime, son of a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the first years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, take him away.

A collection of eighteen personal stories, Born a Crime tells the story of a mischievous young boy growing into a restless young man as he struggles to find his place in a world where he was never supposed to exist. Born a Crime is equally the story of that young man's fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother - a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that ultimately threatens her own life.

Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Noah illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a personal portrait of an unlikely childhood in a dangerous time, as moving and unforgettable as the very best memoirs and as funny as Noah's own hilarious stand-up. Born a Crime is a must read.

A cantankerously funny view of books and the people who love them. It does take all kinds and through the misanthropic eyes of a very grumpy bookseller, we see them all--from the "Person Who Doesn't Know What They Want (But Thinks It Might Have a Blue Cover)" to the "Parents Secretly After Free Childcare." From behind the counter, Shaun Bythell catalogs the customers who roam his shop in Wigtown, Scotland. There's the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), Occultists (from Conspiracy Theorist to Craft Woman). Then there's the Loiterer (including the Erotica Browser and the Self-Published Author), the Bearded Pensioner (including the Lyrca Clad), and the The Not-So-Silent Traveller (the Whistler, Sniffer, Hummer, Farter, and Tutter). Two bonus sections include Staff and, finally, Perfect Customer--all add up to one of the funniest book about books you'll ever find. Shaun Bythell (author of Confessions of a Bookseller) and his mordantly unique observational eye make this perfect for anyone who loves books and bookshops. "Bythell is having fun and it's infectious."--Scotsman "Virtuosic venting ... misanthropy with bursts of sweetness." Guardian "All the ingredients for a gentle human comedy are here, as soothing as a bag of boiled sweets and just as tempting to dip into."--Literary Review "Any reader finding this book in their stocking on Christmas morning should feel lucky...contains plenty to amuse--an excellent diversion"--Bookmunch

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022 'Sparklingly sardonic ... There really is no one like Bennett' Independent 'Filled with elegiac memories and literary gossip ... a major National Treasure' Lynn Barber 4 March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. 20 March. With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch. A year in and out of lockdown as experienced by Alan Bennett. The diary takes us from the filming of Talking Heads to thoughts on Boris Johnson, from his father's short-lived craze for family fishing trips, to stair lifts, junk shops of old, having a haircut, and encounters on the local park bench. A lyrical afterword describes the journey home to Yorkshire from King's Cross station via fish and chips on Quebec Street, past childhood landmarks of Leeds, through Coniston Cold, over the infant River Aire, and on.

Julian Barrie knows that it's hard for men to find the women of their dreams and then sometimes even harder to keep them. He's made keen observations over the years when it comes to women and engaging in serious relationships with them and has noted bits of wisdom to help any man about to embark upon such a journey. Do you ever wish you could go back in time to your teen years or early twenties and advise yourself on how to avoid life-changing mistakes involving women?

Barrie provides humorous insights, including eleven commandments, regarding how to find, attract, and keep the woman of your dreams. Learn how to make decisions that will create a happy and peaceful existence with the love of your life.

Let Chasing Women without Leaving Your Seat help you choose your life mate and guide you through the often tricky stages of friendship, courtship, relationship, nuptials, raising a family, and finally, retirement, while keeping the sparks of romance burning brightly.

The hectic, sad, ever so funny, you have to be kidding me life of a waiter and the day-to-day life of survival in the restaurant industry. Learn how to eat free and truly understand what the wait staff is thinking as they approach your table. Wait staff are a lot like first responders. We have to be at the tables no matter what is happening in our lives or even on the planet due to, as I like to call it, the "You're kidding me, right?" factor. Even in the midst of a global cataclysm, I do not even bother calling work to see if I need to go in today, as I know the answer is always going to be yes. It can be raining bricks and fireballs, deadly hoards of the living dead can be running the streets, killing at will. A nuclear holocaust of biblical proportions can be imminently poised to strike my city, and still I need to show up, uniform and all. Why, you ask me? Because some wicked stupid idiot and his family will show at the tables up to eat.

1975 Kenny fell in love with motorcycles; it was his gateway to freedom. Motorcycles were a big part of his life, and in 2008 a near fatal motorcycle vs car accident changed his life forever. This book details the events of his life and struggles with rehabilitation.