Satire History

What if you could make a change to history that would eliminate the Spanish Inquisition, American slavery, World War II, global warming, and an egomaniacal US president who thought he was smart enough to drop nuclear bombs here and there without negative consequences? What if that change also made the United States and five billion people poof from existence? Would you do it?

From the creators of the smash hit play comes the ultimate audiobook of Jewish humor, a hysterical guide to Judaism that explores all of the religion's stereotypes, history, and shameless guilt trips.

La obra de Francisco Quevedo abarca la mayoría de los géneros prosísticos del siglo XVIII y refleja su visión pesimista de la sociedad española de los Austrias menores. El Buscón, extraordinaria novela picaresca, combina la crítica social con la intención de crear una obra de arte del lenguaje.

Follow the history of an unlikely cat. Catcoin is a globe trotting tale that reveals the history of a new money that changes the way people spend money, and disrupts the way banks do business, and tips the scales of the balance of power held by world governments. Friendships are forged, lovers are loved, and Durian fruit is smashed. Enrich yourself in the history of Catcoin, the world's first feline-based cryptocurrency.

Space exploration gone different. Although HAM was the first US astronaut, at one point in history it seemed inevitable that the first deep-space pilots would be humans. Of course, we know that things didn't work out that way. This is the story as it actually unfolded, including the real story of Tolan Baboon's flight and his best dirty jokes. A humorous alternate history of the space program.

In one of the most well-known works of satire, Jonathan Swift puts forth a “modest proposal”. Swift begins by outlining the suffering that the starving beggars in Ireland experience daily. He paints a grim picture of the plight these people face to help the listener relate to the situation before turning the tables and suggesting that to alleviate the economic troubles of the poor, their children could be sold as food to the upper class. The shock from this sudden change is expounded by Swift’s continued explanation of the proposal.

In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind. Writing as painting rather than about painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life.

From Buzzfeed to Tumblr to Fusion, people were puzzled and enthralled by the story of Koons Crooks, a young man who took the Twittered musings of the Silicon Valley elite to heart - and ended up on a profoundly unexpected path, leaving behind only the lovingly hand-calligraphed tweets that had meant so much to him. His story struck an immediate chord. There were competing efforts to identify the author of Iterating Grace; blog posts and lengthy comment threads pointed fingers at writers all over the country.

From 338BC to the sinners of today, Titus O'Reily leads us into the temptations of sportspeople across the globe. We have stories from cricket and ice hockey, soccer and baseball, tennis and boxing, NFL and competitive eating, and more. We meet the players, mascots and administrators whose sins are absurd, unwise, inspired or reckless and sometimes lead to losing (sport's greatest sin).

In this short 5,225 word novelette's first page Violetta, the Russian Nurse, runs into a friend, Rosa Green, who says to her: “Life has lost its meaning for me. I am going into this drug store here to buy sleeping pills to kill myself.” “What? You are going to kill yourself?” Violetta asks. “Yes, life has no value for me.” “Well, in that case, Mrs. Green, why not kill yourself like we do in Russia?” “How do you do it in Russia?” “First of all you drink some vodka. Then you eat big dinner. Not just normal dinner, but very good meal—a feast. Then you drink more vodka ...

Verbal abusers are highly intelligent people who tend to tell their victims what they want to hear in a caring way that allows the abuser to hide the true meaning of the message.

There are dozens of unforgettable characters, and scores of authentic scenes in Brandywine's War. From behind the headlines and the front-line dispatches has come this Rabelaisian novel. Chief Warrant Officer Vaughan completed Brandywine's War while serving his second of three tours of duty in Vietnam.

Meet Fizzy Oceans—archivist, researcher, environmentalist and adventurer. On her travels she witnesses The Exodus, the Battle of Gettysburg and Hurricane Katrina, as well as many other historical and real time events. She meets notable individuals including Gandhi, Mark Twain, Jacques Cousteau, The Dalai Llama, Saddam Hussein and even a new species called the Quinngen. Such unique experiences and encounters spanning the world and time as we know them would not be possible for a single individual—especially not for a woman named Amy Birkenstock who works as a medical clerk in Seattle, ...

Insulting the president is an American tradition. From Washington to Trump, presidents have been called "lazy," "feeble," "pusillanimous," and more. Our leaders have been derided as "ignoramuses," "idiots," "morons," and "fatheads," and have been compared to all manner of animals - worms and whales and hyenas, sad jellyfish, strutting crows, lap dogs, reptiles, and monkeys. Political insults tell us what we value in our leaders by showing how we devalue them. In Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, linguist Edwin Battistella collects over 500 insults aimed at American presidents.

The High Priests of the Economics profession are a privileged and highly-compensated group. Their speeches are endlessly analyzed, their every public utterance transcribed and disseminated world-wide. Yet they’re often wrong. How can this be? How can a profession that sends one of these high priests to Scandinavia each year to receive a Nobel Prize for achievements in “Economic Science” be so error-prone? The answer is quite simple: Economics, and the social and soft sciences more generally, are not science in the same sense that physics and chemistry and engineering are science. In ...

Gangster in the White House Imagining Another Kind of "Don" as President of the United States What if the mafia ran for president—and won? From the smoky backrooms of the Cosa Nostra to the bright lights of the Oval Office, this provocative thought experiment explores a chilling and satirical parallel: what would happen if a mafia-style “Don”—with all the charm, ruthlessness, and strategic manipulation of a mob boss—rose to the highest office in the land? Set against the backdrop of America's long-standing fascination with organized crime and its unexpected modern-day echoes in ...

The full title of Swift's pamphlet is A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burtden to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick."The tract is an ironically conceived attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth." Across the country poor children, predominantly Catholics, are living in squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed.

Bobo è il personaggio più famoso di Sergio Staino, nato sulle pagine di Linus nel 1979 ha accompagnato il suo autore e l’Italia negli ultimi 40 anni. Bobo ha sempre rappresentato l’eroe del quotidiano, buono, talvolta ingenuo, sempre benintenzionato, eterno sconfitto che non si arrende e continua a combattere per ciò in cui crede. Un idiota, direbbe qualcuno che non ha la sua purezza d’animo.

Following on the success of his first published novel, The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) published two short stories. With his farcical "burlesque autobiography", he describes a series of disreputable characters all of whom he claims were his ancestors. The second story, A Medieval First Romance, satirizes romance novels with a yarn about the cross-dressing daughter of a duke who thanks to her disguise is in line to inherit male privilege.

Would you know a Mod from a Rocker, Dr No from Dr Who, or Simon from Garfunkel? If so, then kick off your go-go boots, switch on the lava lamp and reminisce about the age of peace and free love, when England won the World Cup, men walked on the moon and daleks first menaced the planet.