What Do You Want Your Life To Be Like?

Tired of memoirs that only tell you what really happened?
 

Sick of deeply personal accounts written in the first person? 

Seeking an exciting, interactive read that puts the “u” back in “aUtobiography”? 

Then look no further than Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography! In this revolutionary, Joycean experiment in light celebrity narrative, actor/personality/carbon-based-life-form Neil Patrick Harris lets you, the reader, live his life. You will be born to New Mexico. You will get your big break at an acting camp. You will get into a bizarre confrontation outside a nightclub with actor Scott Caan. Even better, at each critical juncture of your life you will choose how to proceed. You will decide whether to try out for Doogie Howser, M.D. You will decide whether to spend years struggling with your sexuality. You will decide what kind of caviar you want to eat on board Elton John’s yacht.

Choose correctly and you’ll find fame, fortune, and true love. Choose incorrectly and you’ll find misery, heartbreak, and a hideous death by piranhas. All this, plus magic tricks, cocktail recipes, embarrassing pictures from your time as a child actor, and even a closing song. Yes, if you buy one book this year, congratulations on being above the American average, and make that book Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography!

Read an excerpt HERE.

“Author and illustrator McCall teams up with late-night host Letterman for this brilliant parody of the lifestyle of the One Percent, the richest of the American rich....The text is witty, and McCall’s illustrations are beautifully executed...much to laugh at here.”— Booklist

The billionaire Russian “oiligarch” whose replica of Czar Alexander II’s yacht plies a vast man-made Crimean lake, brimming not with water but billions of gallons of petroleum from his own pipeline…
The packaged-suttee mogul Sir Sith Ram Pramba, who sliced the top off Mount Everest and installed it on his terrace atop a Park Avenue apartment building…

The heir to a California railroad spike fortune who uses a private cross-country tunnel, assembled from giant redwoods laid end to end, for 120-mph runs in cars from his exotic équipe between San Francisco and New York…

The vast Montana lodge where Gulfstreams land in the living room and an ex-CIA drone ferries fresh casks of Côtes du Rhône along the three-mile route between the wine cellar and the dining hall…
The unsinkable forty-room polystyrene iceberg cum floating vacation retreat where Claude Ste. Nervous, the Quebec Styrofoam king, cruises the Arctic Ocean in high summer and, riding on his tamed polar bear, hunts for baby seals…

These and dozens more of that new breed of swashbuckling post-millennial Midases dedicated to self-indulgent fun—whatever the cost in money, ecological mayhem, environmental devastation, and other such nuisances—are celebrated in This Land Was Made for You and Me (but Mostly Me), this lavishly illustrated chronicle that nobody expected or even wanted, but that Bruce McCall and David Letterman went ahead and created anyway.

A Hilarious Guide to the Lost Art of Artisanal Pencil Sharpening

A hilarious guide to the lost art of artisanal pencil sharpening
Have you got the right kind of point on your pencil? Do you know how to achieve the perfect point for the kind of work you need out of that pencil?

Deep in New York’s Hudson River Valley, craftsman David Rees—the world’s number one #2 pencil sharpener—still practices the age-old art of manual pencil sharpening. In 2010, he began offering his artisanal service to the world, to the jubilation of artists, writers, draftsmen, and standardized test takers.

Now, in a book that is both a manifesto and a fully-illustrated walk-through of the many, many, many ways to sharpen a pencil, he reveals the secrets of his craft. How to Sharpen Pencils takes the novice pencil sharpener through a variety of sharpening techniques and includes chapters on equipment, current practice, and modern technologies. It also points at essential new trends in sharpening, including "Celebrity Impression Pencil Sharpening (CIPS)," a warning about the “Psychological Risks Associated with Pencil Sharpening”, and a survey of "Wines that tastes like pencils."

As Rees implores, "Sharpening pencils should be an activity that enriches the senses."

When Technology and Communication Collide

A collection of insanely funny texts between parents and kids, When Parents Text is a surprisingly affecting window into the complicated time when parents aren't ready to let go, and kids aren't ready to "be "let go. The parents are well-meaning but hopeless, silly and a little corny, and befuddled by the technology. The kids are bewildered yet patient: the perfect straight man. And the authors, two recent college graduates, Lauren Kaelin and Sophia Fraioli, have an unerring editorial instinct to select the funniest, sweetest, quirkiest, most-telling exchanges.There's the revelatory: "Mom: My fingers are saying words. This is amazing." The virtual scolding: "Dad: I will deal with your sassy behavior when I get home. Meanwhile have some fiber."The autofill-challenged: "Mom: dig up some tadpoles on ur way homo. Me: ummm, what? Mom: It autocorrected me. I mean to say dig up some tadpoles on ur way homo. (4 minutes later) Mom: PICK UP SOME TAMPONS ON YOUR WAY HOME."The manically inappropriate: "Mom: Woo Hoo--Ruth died, you know Uncle Lyman's wife, BUT I have your Braves tickets and check on the table "And the downright inexplicable: "Dad: You could poop your pants in the yankee candle store and no one would know."

Launched as a website just last year, www.whenparentstext.com is a phenomenon. It receives 300,000 to 500,000 page views a day, with features in "The Huffington Post," "Entertainment Weekly," "College Humor," and more. When Parents Text includes the best of texts from the website, plus more than 50 percent all-new material never before published.Includes an emoticon glossary and 16-page color insert of MMS texts-- multimedia messaging service, aka, bizarre photos from mom and dad. It's the perfect gift for every text-savvy kid to give to his or her parents.

From Ranting To Writing

God. No!

From the larger, louder half of the world-famous magic duo Penn & Teller comes a scathingly funny reinterpretation of The Ten Commandments. They are The Penn Commandments, and they reveal one outrageous and opinionated atheist's experience in the world. In this rollicking yet honest account of a godless existence, Penn takes readers on a roller coaster of exploration and flips conventional religious wisdom on its ear to reveal that doubt, skepticism, and wonder -- all signs of a general feeling of disbelief -- are to be celebrated and cherished, rather than suppressed. And he tells some pretty damn funny stories along the way. From performing blockbuster shows on the Vegas Strip to the adventures of fatherhood, from an on-going dialogue with proselytizers of the Christian Right to the joys of sex while scuba diving, Jillette's self-created Decalogue invites his reader on a journey of discovery that is equal parts wise and wisecracking.

Be Prepared (To Laugh, A Lot)

The Worst-Case Scenario Surival Handbook: Paranormal

On hit TV shows, in best-selling books, blockbuster films, video games, and comics, pop culture has been overrun by hordes of vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, wizards, and other paranormal creatures. Luckily, the authors of the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series are back with all-new, expert advice designed to help readers fend off the furry, fanged, freaky, and frightful. This classic handbook format is packed with new illustrated instructions for crucial scenarios ranging from the domestic (How to Host a Cocktail Party When Your House is Haunted) to the scary (How to Survive a Zombie Attack in the First Day, First Week, and Long Term) to the practical (How to Break Up with a Vampire).

Take a peek inside:
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Paranormal