From the genius of funnyman Bob Fenster, who brought you Duh!, They Did What!?, and Well, Duh!, comes another in real-life idiocy. The Duh Awards honors the intellectually challenged and utterly inept. From historical explorers to politicians to celebrities to everyday people, no one is spared from lampoon. Ever notice there seems to be an award show for just about everything? And that everyone who wins is rich, beautiful, and brilliant? Good-looking, intelligent winners are everywhere. The Duh Awards is for the rest of us. These awards are handed out to the not-so-smart, the underworked, the overpaid, the wacky, the weird, and the downright stupid. And it's about time! Chapters include such ridiculousness as: Boss of the Year and Other Slave Driver Awards; Champion Scoffers, Scorners, Insulters, and Other All-Star Wise Guys; and Only in Hollywood-The Anti-Oscars. Here are just a excerpts from this hilarious book: The Know-a-Little, Talk-a-Lot Society presents the Anti-Expert Awards: In 1931 President Herbert Hoover somehow missed the impact of the Great Depression when he offered this solution: "If someone could get off a good joke every ten days, I think our troubles would be over." Winning Mind Games: All-Star Shockers, Psych-Outs, and Gross Champs: During the halftime show of the 2004 Super Bowl, singer Justin Timberlake removed part of singer Janet Jackson's shirt to reveal one of her star breasts on national TV. This upset viewers who had tuned in to watch rapper Nelly grab his crotch. The Spin Awards for Fooling Most of the People Enough of the Time: In 2003 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the press: "As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know." The Duh Awards celebrates the moments that some would rather we forget.

Forty experts discuss how they have written books for their professional success, thereby increasing their credibility and enhancing their reputations.

Telling hundreds of true stories about the weird and wacky stuff that happens when people operate outside of the box, author Bob Fenster proves that life is funny when you least expect it but need it the most, in his hilarious book, Twisted: Tales from the Wacky Side of Life. Filled with tales of outlandish human endeavors, Twisted will have you shaking your head and laughing out loud. For example, the 18th-century lawyer Hugh Brackenridge had a unique response when challenged to a duel: "If you want to try your pistols, take some object, a tree or a barn door, about my dimensions. If you hit that, send me word; and I shall acknowledge that if I had been in the same place, you might also have hit me." Celebrating the crazy things people do and their strange accomplishments in all fields of human activity, Twisted covers a wide range of subjects such as history, the arts, pop culture, sports, and science. The book also investigates entertaining oddities of nature, such as fish that change sex in polluted rivers. Enjoy these other hilarious Twisted tales: When he was a guest on the Tonight Show, movie star Tom Hanks and host Jay Leno chatted about uncomfortable moments in public restrooms. "Do you ever want to ask the guy next to you to leave so you can go?" Leno asked. "No," Hanks said. "I usually say, 'Come here. I want to show you something.'" It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it," Pope John XXII reported. "Then I wake up completely and remember I am the Pope."

If you are stupid, then you're too dumb to know it. If you're smart, then you are no doubt smart enough to doubt yourself. --Bob Fenster The Big Book of Duh! is the perfect read regardless of where you happen to be sitting--think Uncle John's Bathroom Reader meets The Darwin Awards (without any of the dreary dead stuff). Proving there is a lot of reading going on in suburbia's smallest room, more than 1.5 million copies of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader have been sold since its first publication in 1988. As the new water-closet contender, Bob Fenster continues his romp into areas of idiot intrigue by chronicling the folly and reckless abandon of the human race. * Covering such topics as My Favorite Morons, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, The Surprising Things People Don't Know, and Dumb Plays in the Face of Fate, this compendium chronicles the densely inept and decidedly ignorant. * Featuring outrageous new stories plus the best material from the previous Duh! books, this compilation is the ultimate collection of human stupidity.

Truth, as any good reporter knows, is stranger than fiction. It's often funnier as well. Bob Fenster provides proof of that in his latest hilarious collection, Each Laugh Off chapter presents a collection of true-life anecdotes and professional comic material covering subjects such as funny money; on-the-job laughs; show biz glory; jokes for jocks; and doctors without pants, lawyers without briefs. The mix provides a plethora of funny stories, and readers get the chance to judge for themselves which scores higher on the Laugh Meter. Whichever way they lean, Laugh Off proves that life never lacks for hilarious material. Packed with hundreds of whimsical and witty stories, sayings, and observations, Laugh Off is arranged in a three-part format: part 1 presents the everyday vs. comic showdowns, part 2 explores comedy through the regular lives of executives, teachers, surfers, politicians, and others, and part 3 delivers bonus laughs for the humor-deprived. Together it all makes Laugh Off one big hoot!

What we can learn about human nature from the informative, manipulative, confusing, and amusing messages at the bottom of the web. Online comment can be informative or misleading, entertaining or maddening. Haters and manipulators often seem to monopolize the conversation. Some comments are off-topic, or even topic-less. In this book, Joseph Reagle urges us to read the comments. Conversations “on the bottom half of the Internet,” he argues, can tell us much about human nature and social behavior. Reagle visits communities of Amazon reviewers, fan fiction authors, online learners, scammers, freethinkers, and mean kids. He shows how comment can inform us (through reviews), improve us (through feedback), manipulate us (through fakery), alienate us (through hate), shape us (through social comparison), and perplex us. He finds pre-Internet historical antecedents of online comment in Michelin stars, professional criticism, and the wisdom of crowds. He discusses the techniques of online fakery (distinguishing makers, fakers, and takers), describes the emotional work of receiving and giving feedback, and examines the culture of trolls and haters, bullying, and misogyny. He considers the way comment—a nonstop stream of social quantification and ranking—affects our self-esteem and well-being. And he examines how comment is puzzling—short and asynchronous, these messages can be slap-dash, confusing, amusing, revealing, and weird, shedding context in their passage through the Internet, prompting readers to comment in turn, “WTF?!?”