Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes PDF Download

Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393069443
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
“Finally I understand what it is I’ve been laughing at all these years.”—Jimmy Kimmel From the best-selling author of Why Does the World Exist? comes this outrageous, uproarious compendium of absurdity, filth, racy paradox, and gratuitous offensiveness—just the kind of mature philosophical reflection readers have come to expect from the ever-entertaining Jim Holt. Indeed, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This is the first book to trace the evolution of the joke all the way from the standup comics of ancient Athens to the comedy-club Seinfelds of today. After exploring humor’s history in Part One, Holt delves into philosophy in Part Two: Wall Street jokes; jokes about rednecks and atheists, bulimics and politicians; jokes you missed if you didn’t go to a Catholic girls’ school; jokes about logic and existence itself . . . all became fodder for the grand theories of Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Wittgenstein in this heady mix of the high and low, of the ribald and profound, from America’s most beloved philosophical pundit.

Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404095
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.

Author: Tamara Shopsin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451687435
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
An extraordinarily moving memoir from an iconoclastic new talent—an artist, cook, and illustrator whose adventures at home and abroad reveal the importance of living life with your eyes wide open. Best known for her witty illustrations, and as a cook beside her mischievous father in her family’s legendary Manhattan restaurant, in Mumbai New York Scranton, Tamara Shopsin offers a brilliantly inventive, spare, and elegant chronicle of a year in her life characterized by impermanence. In a refreshingly original voice alternating between tender and brazen, Shopsin recounts a trip to the Far East with her sidekick husband and the harrowing adventure that unfolds when she comes home. Entire worlds, deep relationships, and indelible experiences are portrayed in Shopsin’s deceptively simple and sparse language and drawings. Blending humor, love, suspense—and featuring photographs by Jason Fulford—Mumbai New York Scranton inspires a kaleidoscope of emotions. Shopsin’s surprising and affecting tale will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Author: John Pollack
Publisher: Avery
ISBN: 1592406750
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book is a funny, erudite, and provocative exploration of puns, the people who make them, and this derided wordplay's remarkable impact on human history.

Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717842
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
From Jim Holt, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Does the World Exist?, comes an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries in When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought. Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. Holt offers a painless and playful introduction to many of our most beautiful but least understood ideas, from Einsteinian relativity to string theory, and also invites us to consider why the greatest logician of the twentieth century believed the U.S. Constitution contained a terrible contradiction—and whether the universe truly has a future.

Author: Al Gini
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442281774
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
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.

Author: Tina Frolund
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1610694325
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Make history come alive! This book helps librarians and teachers as well as readers themselves find books they will enjoy—titles that will animate and explain the past, entertain, and expand their minds. This invaluable resource offers reading lists of contemporary and classic non-fiction history books and historical fiction, covering all time periods throughout the world, and including practically all manner of human endeavors. Every book included is hand-selected as an entertaining and enlightening read! Organized by appeal characteristics, this book will help readers zero in on the history books they will like best—for instance, titles that emphasize character, tell a specific type of historical story, convey a mood, or are presented in a particular setting. Every book listed has been recommended based on the author's research, and has proved to be a satisfying and worthwhile read.

Author: John Capps
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444356208
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
You've Got to Be Kidding!: How Jokes Can Help You Think is a thoughtful and accessible analysis of the ways in which jokes illustrate how we think critically, and how the thinking process goes awry in everyday human situations. Uses jokes to illustrate the various mistakes or fallacies that are typically identified and discussed in courses on critical reasoning Provides an effective way to learn critical thinking skills since jokes often describe real-life situations where it really matters whether a person thinks well or not Demonstrates how philosophy is actually very practical and clearly related to real- life human experiences Explains how developing good reasoning habits can make a real difference in all aspects of one's life

Author: Robert R. Clewis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350112771
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
While Kant is commonly regarded as one of the most austere philosophers of all time, this book provides quite a different perspective of the founder of transcendental philosophy. Kant is often thought of as being boring, methodical, and humorless. Yet the thirty jokes and anecdotes collected and illustrated here for the first time reveal a man and a thinker who was deeply interested in how humor and laughter shape how we think, feel, and communicate with fellow human beings. In addition to a foreword on Kant's theory of humor by Noël Carroll as well as Clewis's informative chapters, Kant's Humorous Writings contains new translations of Kant's jokes, quips, and anecdotes. Each of the thirty excerpts is illustrated and supplemented by historical commentaries which explain their significance.

Author: Thomas Cathcart
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440634238
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This New York Times bestseller is the hilarious philosophy course everyone wishes they’d had in school. 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 deduced anything). Philosophy 101 for those who like to take the heavy stuff lightly, this is a joy to read—and finally, it all makes sense! And now, you can read Daniel Klein's further musings on life and philosophy in Travels with Epicurus and Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change it.