Collection: Humor

Comedian Rob Anderson examines queer stereotypes and LGBTQ+ culture with humorous explanations borrowed from real principles across multiple fields of science.

Using the principles of natural, social, and formal sciences, Rob answers extremely serious questions like: Why can't gays sit in a chair properly? Why don't lesbians have electricity in their movies? Are colleges turning people bisexual? How does gaydar work? Will bottoms survive the apocalypse?

You'll read about the three subtypes of the gay uncle species, examine the Periodic Table of LGBTQ+ Elements, understand gay crime and punishment, and get educated on the types of bacteria and viruses that exclusively affect the LGBTQs, like the state of Florida.

Inspired by his viral "Gay Science" series, Rob recreates some of his most popular episodes in a literary format, and also tackles completely fresh subjects, presenting them with super empirical and totally evidence-based homosexual data.

Gay Science includes:

• Coverage of 60 topics across 29 fields of science including biology, chemistry, physics, genetics, botany, nutrition, astronomy, anthropology, oceanography, sociology, criminology, engineering, computer science, and more!
• Informative sidebars including Get PrePared, The Tea, Serving Conclusions, The Gloss, Yas or Naur, Fagtoids, and A Lesbian Explains.
• Diagrams, charts, illustrations, and maps to explain the gayest concepts.

Rob Anderson is course-correcting decades of educational shortcomings by explaining the scientific reasonings behind every aspect of LGBTQ+ life. If you're looking for a fun book that will probably be banned (if it isn't already), addGay Science to your personal lesson plan.

Featuring deep dives into thirst traps, drag queens, Antonio Banderas, and telenovelas--all in the service of helping us reframe how we talk about (desiring) men--this insightful memoir-in-essays is as much a coming of age as a coming out book

Manuel Betancourt has long lustfully coveted masculinity--in part because he so lacked it. As a child in Bogotá, Colombia, he grew up with the social pressure to appear strong, manly, and, ultimately, straight. And yet in the films and television he avidly watched, Betancourt saw glimmers of different possibilities. From the stars of telenovelas and the princes of Disney films to pop sensation Ricky Martin and teen heartthrobs in shows like Saved By the Bell, he continually found himself asking: Do I want him or do I want to be him?

The Male Gazed grapples with the thrall of masculinity, examining its frailty and its attendant anxieties even as it focuses on its erotic potential. Masculinity, Betancourt suggests, isn't suddenly ripe for deconstruction--or even outright destruction--amid so much talk about its inherent toxicity. Looking back over decades' worth of pop culture's attempts to codify and reframe what men can be, wear, do, and desire, this book establishes that to gaze at men is still a subversive act.

Written in the spirit of Hanif Abdurraqib and Olivia Laing, The Male Gazed mingles personal anecdotes with cultural criticism to offer an exploration of intimacy, homoeroticism, and the danger of internalizing too many toxic ideas about masculinity as a gay man.

2024 Stonewall Book Award Winner--Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Book Award

Featured on NPR's Books We Love 2023

One of Vulture's Best Comedy Books of 2023

"This book is a triumph and everyone should read it."
--Dan Savage, journalist and author, on the "Savage Lovecast"

"Hi Honey, I'm Homo is a heartbreaking historical document, but ultimately one that will leave the reader feeling proud of how something as maligned and disposable as the network sitcom used comedy to bring about such profound and important social progress."
--Vulture

"[A] well-curated compendium of prime time broadcasting . . . Baume is a companionable guide."
--Shelf Awareness

Behind the scenes of the most popular sitcoms of the 20th century, a revolution was brewing.

For decades, amidst the bright lights, studio-audience laughs, and absurdly large apartment sets, the real-life story of American LGBTQ+ liberation unfolded in plain sight in front of millions of viewers, most of whom were laughing too hard to mind.

From flamboyant relatives on Bewitched to closely-guarded secrets on All in the Family, from network-censor fights over Soap to behind-the-scenes activism on the set of The Golden Girls, from Ellen's culture clash and Will & Grace's mixed reception to Modern Family's primetime power-couple, Hi Honey, I'm Homo! is the story not only of how subversive queer comedy transformed the American sitcom, from its inception through today, but how our favorite sitcoms transformed, and continue to transform, America.

Accessible, entertaining, and informative, Hi Honey, I'm Homo! features commentary and interviews from celebrities, behind-the-scenes creators, and more.

The bestselling young adult non-fiction book on sexuality and gender!

Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Queer. Intersex. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU.

This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBTQ also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations.

Inside this revised and updated edition, you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask, with topics like:

• Stereotypes--the facts and fiction
• Coming out as LGBT
• Where to meet people like you
• The ins and outs of gay sex
• How to flirt
• And so much more!

You will be entertained. You will be informed. But most importantly, you will know that however you identify (or don't) and whomever you love, you are exceptional. You matter. And so does this book.

This book is for:

• LGBTQIA+ teens, tweens, and adults
• Readers looking to learn more about the LGBTQIA+ community
• Parents of gay kids and other LGBT youth
• Educators looking for advice about the LGBTQIA+ community

Praise for This Book is Gay:

A Guardian Best Book of the Year

2018 Garden State Teen Book Award Winner

"The book every LGBT person would have killed for as a teenager, told in the voice of a wise best friend. Frank, warm, funny, USEFUL."--Patrick Ness, New York Times bestselling author

"This egregious gap has now been filled to a fare-thee-well by Dawson's book."--Booklist *STARRED REVIEW*

"Zachary Zane is one of the best sex writers working today." --Dan Savage, New York Times bestselling author

Named a Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of the Year by Buzzfeed

A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays--part memoir, part manifesto--that explore the author's coming-of-age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.

As a boy, Zachary Zane sensed that all was not right when images of his therapist naked popped into his head. Without an explanation as to why, a deep sense of shame pervaded these thoughts. Though his therapist assured him a little imagination was nothing to be ashamed of, over the years, society told him otherwise.

Boyslut is a series of personal and tantalizing essays that articulate how our society still shames people for the sex that they have and the sexualities that they inhabit. Through the lens of his bisexuality and much self-described sluttiness, Zane breaks down exactly how this sexual shame negatively impacts the sex and relationships in our lives, and through personal experience, shares how we can unlearn the harmful, entrenched messages that society imparts to us.

From stories of drug-fueled threesomes and risqué Grindr hookups to insights on dealing with rejection and living with his boyfriend and his boyfriend's wife, Boyslut is reassuring and often painfully funny--but is most potently a testimony that we can all learn to live healthier lives unburdened by stigma.

David Sedaris, the "champion storyteller," (Los Angeles Times) returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling Calypso

Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask--or not--was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.

But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he's stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.

As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger's teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone's son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.

In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

"Wickedly funny and heartstoppingly vulnerable...every page twinkles with brilliance." --Refinery29

Perfect for fans of Samantha Irby and Trick Mirror, a hilarious, whip-smart collection of personal essays exploring the intersection of queerness, pop culture, the internet, and identity, introducing one of the most undeniably original new voices today.

Jill Gutowitz's life--for better and worse--has always been on a collision course with pop culture. There's the time the FBI showed up at her door because of something she tweeted about Game of Thrones. The pop songs that have been the soundtrack to the worst moments of her life. And of course, the pivotal day when Orange Is the New Black hit the airwaves and broke down the door to Jill's own sexuality. In these honest examinations of identity, desire, and self-worth, Jill explores perhaps the most monumental cultural shift of our lifetimes: the mainstreaming of lesbian culture. Dusting off her own personal traumas and artifacts of her not-so-distant youth she examines how pop culture acts as a fun house mirror reflecting and refracting our values--always teaching, distracting, disappointing, and revealing us.

Girls Can Kiss Now is a fresh and intoxicating blend of personal stories, sharp observations, and laugh-out-loud humor. This timely collection of essays helps us make sense of our collective pop-culture past even as it points the way toward a joyous, uproarious, near--and very queer--future.

The woman behind the icon known as the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells, told by the bombshell herself. The paperback includes 32 new images and an original poem composed by Cassandra when she was 16, perfect for fans to collect.

At only eighteen months old, Cassandra Peterson reached for a pot on the stove and doused herself in boiling water, resulting in third-degree burns over 35 percent of her body. She miraculously survived, but burned and scarred, the impact would stay with her and become an obstacle she was determined to overcome. Cassandra left home at fourteen and supported herself as a go-go dancer. By age seventeen, she was performing as a showgirl in Las Vegas. Then a chance encounter with the "King" himself, Elvis Presley, inspired her to travel to Europe where she worked in film and toured Italy as lead singer of a band. She eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she joined the famed comedy improv group, The Groundlings.
In 1981, as a struggling actress considered past her prime, Cassandra auditioned for a local LA station as hostess for their late-night horror movies. She got the job as "Elvira," never imagining it would lead to fame and a forty-year career. Yours Cruelly, Elvira is an unforgettably wild memoir. Cassandra doesn't shy away from revealing exactly who she is and how she overcame seemingly insurmountable odds. Always original and sometimes outrageous, her story is loaded with twists, travails, revelry, and downright shocking experiences. It is the candid, often hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking tale of a Midwest farm girl's long, strange trip to become the world's sexiest, sassiest Halloween icon.

Instant New York Times Bestseller, Los Angeles Times Bestseller, USA Today Bestseller, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller.

A New York Times Best Books to Give This Season selection.

A detailed guide to surviving history's most challenging threats, from outrunning dinosaurs to making it off the Titanic alive

History is the most dangerous place on earth. From dinosaurs the size of locomotives to meteors big enough to sterilize the planet, from famines to pandemics, from tornadoes to the Chicxulub asteroid, the odds of human survival are slim but not zero--at least, not if you know where to go and what to do.

In each chapter of How to Survive History, Cody Cassidy explores how to survive one of history's greatest threats: getting eaten by dinosaurs, being destroyed by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, succumbing to the lava flows of Pompeii, being devoured by the Donner Party, drowning during the sinking of the Titanic, falling prey to the Black Death, and more. Using hindsight and modern science to estimate everything from how fast you'd need to run to outpace a T. rex to the advantages of different body types in surviving the Donner Party tragedy, Cassidy gives you a detailed battle plan for survival, helping you learn about the era at the same time.

History may be the most dangerous place on earth, but that doesn't mean you can't visit. You can, and you should. And with a copy of How to Survive History in your back pocket, you just might make it out alive.

An Adult Mad Libs based on the Emmy-winning reality show RuPaul's Drag Race!

You'll want to run--in heels--to pick up your copy of RuPaul's Drag Race Mad Libs. Fans can relive their favorite moments from this fierce reality show by playing the 21 stories included in this book. Work!

Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova took the world by storm with their Guide to Modern Womanhood, a book of expert advice on beauty, homemaking, and relationships. Now they're tackling an even bigger challenge: finding success in the modern workplace.

In Working Girls, Trixie and Katya dole out both savvy and satirical advice for every stage of working life, from choosing a career path to sailing into a blissful retirement, in step-by-step guides, quizzes, the world's most bizarre aptitude test, and more. Searching for the perfect interview outfit? Agonizing over how to get that raise? Suspicious that your colleague doesn't really hope their email "finds you well"? Trixie and Katya have got you covered. They also share personal stories from their own remarkable careers and their philosophies on everything from mastering office lingo to getting fired with dignity, all alongside hilarious, gorgeous photos.

Witty, beautiful, and packed with wisdom, Working Girls is the ultimate guide for the working woman.

Featuring critical essays, erotica, and stitched-up memories, Gender/Fucking explores sexual arousal as a site of knowledge about the self and world.Taking the idea of intellectual masturbation a bit too literally, Florence Ashley draws on their experiences as a transfeminine activist, academic, and slut to interrogate what it means to live in a gendered body in our difficult yet occasionally loving world. With personal essays about the fetishization of trans bodies, recovering from surgery, and losing hope, Florence's collection celebrates the queer messiness of sex and identity.Through the embrace of its raw and lyrical prose, Gender/Fucking invites the reader into the intimate world of academic smut to ask what it means to be horny on main in a sex-negative world-and what power it might hold.

The must-have resource for anyone who lives with ADHD, either themselves or with an affected family member. Written to appeal to the ADHD brain, ADHD is Awesome is the engaging, uplifting antidote to traditional ADHD books (which, let's be honest if you have ADHD you'd never read anyway).

If you have ADHD, you live in a world that wasn't designed for you--a world where you're expected to sit still, stay quiet, and focus up and where, because of the way your brain is wired, you can feel like you're failing at life. You are not failing at life. You are awesome.

In their first bestselling book, Everybody Fights, award-winning YouTubers Kim and Penn Holderness of the Holderness Family (8 million followers) upended thinking about fighting in relationships. Now, they are on a mission to reboot how we think about ADHD.

As always, they are doing it by looking in the mirror, because they don't study ADHD, they live it. Penn has walked the ADHD journey for many years, and his wife, Kim, has learned how to support him with grace and good humor.

Drawing on their often-hilarious from-the-trenches insights that have made them beloved content creators and the expertise of their network of doctors, researchers, and specialists, Kim and Penn provide fun, easy-to-digest sections, including:

• What is going on inside the black box of your brain
• How to find humor in the pitfalls, sob stories, and unbelievable triumphs (like the time they won The Amazing Race!) that come with ADHD
• What it's actually like to live with an ADHD brain
• The challenges ADHD presents and how to tackle them
• How to give your attitude a much-needed tune up
• Targeted tools and techniques to play to your unique strengths
• Fun extras like ADHD Bingo, an ode to cargo pants, and what the world would look like if ADHDers were in charge

You are part of a tribe of massively creative, fun-loving, funny, innovators and non-linear thinkers who aren't easily discouraged. Having ADHD can be scary, but it comes with incredible gifts including creativity, hyperfocus, and energy. Welcome to the club.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER

The official tie-in book for the beloved, nine-time Emmy(R) Award-winning series Schitt's Creek.

This beautifully produced, keepsake coffee-table book is the ultimate celebration of the series, the town, the characters, and the state of mind that is Schitt's Creek. Capturing the essence and alchemy of all six seasons of what is now considered to be one of the most groundbreaking comedy television series of the last decade, Best Wishes, Warmest Regards is a gift to fans everywhere who have made the show their own.

Included are character profiles from the cast of Johnny, Moira, David, and Alexis, and all of the characters that populate the town, major moments from Moira's endorsement of Herb Ertlinger Winery, to Patrick and David's first kiss, to Cabaret and the Rose Family Christmas episode. Also included are special features, such as the complete, illustrated catalogs of David's knits and Moira's wigs, Moira's vocabulary, Alexis's adventures, and behind-the-scenes moments from Dan and Eugene Levy and the cast of Schitt's Creek.

From the star of The Book of Mormon and Girls, candid, hilarious essays on anxiety, ambition, and the uncertain path to adulthood that ask: How will we know when we get there?

"With the unsparing eye of David Sedaris and the social wisdom of Nora Ephron, Andrew Rannells tackles the most foundational questions of growing up."--Lena Dunham

In Uncle of the Year, Andrew Rannells wonders: If he, now in his forties, has everything he's supposed to need to be an adult--a career, property, a well-tailored suit--why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-year-old climbing his way toward solid ground? Is it because he hasn't won a Tony, or found a husband, or had a child? And what if he doesn't want those things? (A husband and a child, that is. He wants a Tony.)

In deeply personal essays drawn from his life as well as his career on Broadway and in Hollywood, Rannells argues that we all pretend--for friends, partners, parents, and others--that we are constantly succeeding in the process known as "adulting." But if this acting is leaving us unfulfilled, then we need new markers of time, new milestones, new expectations of what adulthood is and can be.

Along the way, Rannells navigates dating, aging, mental health, bad jobs, and much more. In his essay "Uncle of the Year," he explores the role that children play in his life, as a man who never thought having kids was necessary or even possible--until his siblings have kids and he falls in love with a man with two of his own. In "Always Sit Next to Mark Ruffalo," he reveals the thrills and absurdities of the awards circuit, and the desire to be recognized for one's work. And in "Horses, Not Zebras," he shares the piece of wisdom that helped him finally come to terms with his anxiety and perfectionism.

Filled with honest insights and a sharp wit, Uncle of the Year challenges us to take a long look at who we're pretending to be, who we know we are, and who we want to become.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A BARNES AND NOBLE'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A TOWN & COUNTRY BEST CELEBRITY MEMOIR OF 2023
A VULTURE BEST COMEDY BOOK OF 2023

Hey you guys, it's Leslie. I'm excited to share my story with you.

Now, I'm gonna be honest: Some of the details might be vague because a b*tch is fifty-five and she's smoked a ton of weed. But while bits might be a touch hazy, I can promise you the underlying truth is REAL. Whether I'm talking about my childhood growing up in the South, my early stand-up days driving from gig to gig through the darkest parts of our country and praying I wouldn't get murdered, what Chris Rock told Lorne Michaels, that time I wanted to shoot Whoopi Goldberg on SNL, and yeah, I'll tell you all about Ghostbusters and the nudes and Supermarket Sweep and The Daily Show . . . I'm sharing it all in these pages. It's not easy being a woman in comedy, especially when you're a tall-*ss Black woman with a trumpet voice. I have to fight so that no one takes me for granted, and no one takes advantage. These are the stories that explain why. (Cue the Law & Order theme.)