Flush with delightfully useless--and sometimes even useful--information about sports, movies, music, politics, American and world history, and much more, this book is the most extensive reference guide in the series to date.

You think you know New York? Fugeddaboutit! Uncle John knows New York, though, and he’s taking readers on a whirlwind tour of America’s greatest city...this time in Technicolor! Uncle John’s Plunges into New York (Illustrated Edition) is full of cool trivia and fascinating facts about the Big Apple, but now it’s jam-packed with photographs and illustrations too! What kind of information, you ask? Read all about...• The incredible natural phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge.• The public library, the subway, and the city’s narrowest house.• The Naked Cowboy and Lady Liberty’s big feet.• People who actually tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. And much more! It’s the perfect gift for all New Yorkers—whether they were lucky enough to be born in the Big Apple or just always wished to be.

Uncle John loves New York, so he's taking the plunge…into the land of bagels, bluebirds, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Start spreading the news. You’re reading today. You’re going to be a part of it--New York, New Yooooork! In this ode to the greatest place on Earth, Uncle John takes you through Ellis Island and down the Hudson to bring you the tome about New York that could only come from the Bathroom Readers’ Institute. Find out why the Empire State is the Big Apple of the world’s eye as you read about… * Manhattanhenge * The Big Apple on $0 a day * Heroes and horses of the NYPD * Fran Lee: the Pooper Scooper Lady * The extraordinary evolution of the Bronx River * Incredible finds…in the city’s sewers * How New Jersey lost Staten Island * Charlie Dickens disses New York * The alien hunters of Pine Bush * Big Apple bird watching * Upstate utopias And much, much more!

Part biography, part memoir, part belles lettres--this wonderful book celebrates the act of reading, the writers whose work awakened the soul of a young man growing up in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, and the history of the city itself. Reading New York opens with 12-year-old John Tytell, confined by eye problems to a darkened room, discovering Billy Budd, sailing Melville's ocean by flashlight in bed. Vividly capturing the excitement of his first encounter with a masterpiece, Tytell goes deeper to expose the heart of Melville's story and of the writer's life. He weaves the same kind of spell--from memory, language, and experience--in evoking his encounters with the work of the other writers who figured as milestones in his own coming of age: Poe, Whitman, Henry Miller, Henry James. And completing the book's vivid narrative is Tytell's story: his family's flight from Antwerp after the Nazi invasion, his own life in New York--as a child, as an adolescent, and as an adult still moved by the books that helped shape him. Acclaimed for his biographies of Ezra Pound and the Beats, Tytell now gives us a brilliant hybrid: acutely perceptive literary criticism that is, as well, an intimate exploration of the experience of literature, and of a city steeped in literary lorc.

Uncle John takes a full-color plunge into the Garden State! As the birthplace of baseball, the Boss, and Bubble Wrap—New Jersey has got it all, and Uncle John’s Plunges into New Jersey (Illustrated Edition) covers it all…in brilliant Technicolor! This cool compendium is full of electrifying trivia and fascinating facts about the Garden State, but now it’s jam-packed with photographs and illustrations too! What kind of information are in these pages, you ask? Read all about… • What to eat at a diner (breakfast...anytime…obviously). • Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Shuffle. • The parts of Ellis Island that aren’t in New York. • Jersey Boys, Jersey Girls, and the Jersey Devil. And much more! It’s the perfect gift for all New Jerseyans—whether they were lucky enough to be born in the Garden State or just always wished to be.

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

The popular bathroom reader series is back with this collection that’s flush with laughs. It’s new, it’s improved, it’s the funniest ever! Back by popular demand, this newly revised edition includes plenty of all-time favorites, along with more than twenty-five pages of new content. That’s page after page after page of laugh-out-loud dumb jokes, dumb jocks, toasts, pranks, kings, kittens, caboodles, and, of course, poorly translated kung fu movie subtitles such as “It took my seven digestive pills to dissolve your hairy crab!” So, whether you like your humor witty or witless, light or dark, silly or sublime, you’ll laugh until your head explodes. Chortle at: ·Dumb crooks: The robber who ran face-first into a wall because he forgot to poke eye holes in his pillowcase. ·Witty wordplay: If Snoop Dogg were to marry Winnie-the-Pooh, his name would become Snoop Dogg Pooh. ·Flubbed headlines: “British Left Waffles On House Floor” ·Quirky stars: Billy Idol’s concert rider demands he have one large tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter in his dressing room. ·Job lingo: If you hear an ER doc mention a “VIP,” be on the lookout for a “very intoxicated patient.” ·Sputtering sportscasters: “If only faces could talk.” —Pat Summerall And much, much more