Is Barbra Streisand a star? Is Bruce Springsteen a star? Is Sean Penn a star? Are any of the Hollywood players who endlessly complain about America (and make $20 million per picture) and say that America is a racist, imperialist country a star? Ben Stein doesn’t think so. He says that the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America and fight for our freedom while risking their lives for $1,500 a month are the real stars. He says the real stars are the ones who fight fires and fight crime and teach autistic children for modest wages. When Ben wrote this in an online essay not too long ago, it became one of the most widely circulated pieces in the history of the Internet. Likewise, when Ben said that he had no idea who Nick and Jessica were and wondered why they got so much media attention, but that he knew for sure that here was no harm in Americans wishing each other Merry Christmas or hanging Christmas wreaths, and that as a Jew, he did not feel at all offended by the celebration of Christmas, his column was circulated to millions. These columns have appeared in The New York Times, on CBS News, in The American Spectator, and on E! Online. Here, Ben has compiled them into a book of commentaries that will help you get your head on straight about what is important in our world today and what is nonsense. You will feel anger, joy, and sadness as you read these essays . . . and you are sure to learn something valuable from all of them.

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For those who know... that something is going on... The witnesses are legion, scattered across the world and dotted through history, people who looked up and saw something impossible lighting up the night sky. What those objects were, where they came from, and who—or what—might be inside them is the subject of fierce debate and equally fierce mockery, so that most who glimpsed them came to wish they hadn’t. Most, but not everyone. Among those who know what they’ve seen, and—like the toll of a bell that can’t be unrung—are forever changed by it, are a pilot, an heiress, a journalist, and a prisoner of war. From the waning days of the 20th century’s final great war to the fraught fields of Afghanistan to the otherworldly secrets hidden amid Nevada’s dusty neverlands—the truth that is out there will propel each of them into a labyrinth of otherworldly technology and the competing aims of those who might seek to prevent—or harness—these beings of unfathomable power. Because, as it turns out, we are not the only ones who can invent and build...and destroy. Featuring actual events and other truths drawn from sources within the military and intelligence community, Tom DeLonge and A.J. Hartley offer a tale at once terrifying, fantastical, and perhaps all too real. Though it is, of course, a work of... fiction?