A collection of commencement speeches and other wit and wisdom from the New York Times–bestselling literary icon and author of Slaughterhouse-Five. Master storyteller and satirist Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most in-demand commencement speakers of his time. For each occasion, Vonnegut’s words were unfailingly insightful and witty, and they stayed with audience members long after graduation. This expanded second edition also includes more than sixty pages of further thoughts from Vonnegut (whose good advice wasn’t limited to graduation speeches). Edited by Dan Wakefield, and including such pieces as “How to Make Money and Find Love!,” “How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don’t,” and “Somebody Should Have Told Me Not to Join a Fraternity,” this book reads like a narrative in the unique voice that made Vonnegut a hero to readers everywhere. Hilarious, razor-sharp, freewheeling, and at times deeply serious, these reflections are ideal not just for graduates but for anyone undergoing what Vonnegut would call their “long-delayed puberty ceremony”—marking the long and challenging passage to full-time adulthood. “Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence.” —The New York Times

For this first-ever paperback edition of If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?, the beloved collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s campus speeches, editor Dan Wakefield has unearthed three early gems as a sort of prequel—the anti-war Moratorium Day speech he gave in Barnstable, Massachusetts, in October 1969, a 1970 speech to Bennington College recommending “skylarking,” and a 1974 speech to Hobart and William Smith Colleges about the importance of extended families in an age of loneliness. Vonnegut himself never graduated college, so his words of admonition, advice, and hilarity always carried the delight, gentle irony, and generosity of someone savoring the promise of his fellow citizens—especially the young—rather than his own achievements. Selected and introduced by fellow novelist and friend Dan Wakefield, the speeches in If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? comprise the first and only book of Vonnegut’s speeches. There are fourteen speeches, eleven given at colleges, one to the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, one on the occasion of Vonnegut receiving the Carl Sandburg Award, and now the anti-war speech he gave just months after the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, as well as from related short personal essays—eighteen chapters in all. In each of these, Vonnegut takes pains to find the few things worth saying and a conversational voice to say them in that isn’t heavy-handed or pretentious or glib, but funny, joyful, and serious too, even if sometimes without seeming so.

It is easy to be a terrorist in America. Everything you need is in your local supermarket. Forget dynamite or gunpowder. Forget guns. Americans keep the most technologically advanced toys of any country in the world. The most deadly killers in the world this side of water, and all it takes is a spark. A few wires, a battery (usually provided) and you're set. The Quiet Man's foray into terrorism required more than a few wires. He required a targeted approach. Cruise missiles up the tailpipe. A couple of transistors and switches. The car alarm comes on, the device is armed. The car alarm switches off...five...four...three...two... And that's that. Ten cars. Ten devices. There were the usual calls for rounding up all Arabs and 'detaining' them for 'questioning.' Long-term questioning behind barbed wire. Don't panic, said the police. Hell, let 'em panic, said everyone else. Maybe they'll turn their damn alarms off. They did. Sunday morning the Quiet Man slept in peace. But not because it was quiet. The lack of car alarms didn't stop the bottles and the screams. He slept because he'd done something. The Quiet Man slept and dreamt of power.

Is about a teen that had encounter various hard times experience in life including a murder he had witness which will change his life for ever.

1977. New York City. Cool and crime-ridden, cheap and wild. Bruce Van Dusen shows up in town with a film degree and $150 to his name. He wants to make movies. The only ones anyone will pay him to make? Little ones. Thirty seconds long. Commercials. He has no idea what he’s doing and the money sucks. But he’s a director. He gets hired by a client on life support in the most depressing hospital in New York. Gets peed on by a lion. Explains peristalsis to a Tony winner. Makes a movie and goes to Sundance. Goes back to little movies when it bombs. Keeps hustling, shooting anything. Is an a**hole, pays the price, finally learns when and how to be an a**hole and becomes one of the industry’s stars. Years go by and it’s not what he expected. It’s harder, weirder, and funnier. But it worked out. It worked out great, actually.

The girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls into their father's; and to both parents ... they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death. Pretty Meg, tomboy Jo, shy Beth, and vain Amy, the four March sisters, are as different as sisters can be, but more devoted and loyal sisters you'll never find. For though the March girls fight, tease, nag, and scold as all sisters do, they do so with the knowledge that nothing is as precious as a sister's love. Discover the magic of family in the first part of this classic novel cherished by young girls everywhere.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

"The story of a boy growing up Mormon in America with a dream to play jazz trumpet. ... It begins in 1956. Young Shake Tauffler hears a line of music on the radio of a cattle truck that changes his life forever. The music is jazz. The instrument is a trumpet. His family is moving one last time - from a southern Utah ranch to a town outside Salt Lake - on his father's quest to bring his family from Switzerland to the heartland of the Mormon church. In two months, when Shake turns twelve, he'll join his buddies on a shared journey through the ranks of his father's take-no-prisoners religion. At the same time, armed with a used trumpet and his bike, he'll start another journey, on his own, to a place whose high priests aren't his father's friends but the Negro greats of jazz, men he's been taught to believe are cursed but from whose music he learns everything he dreams of being."--Back cover.

It Isn’t Adultery if You Keep Your Underwear On is one book that you definitely can judge by its cover. The book is obviously about humor, but there is much more. Ragman blended some fighter pilot humor with true, accurate stories about life in the fast lane, i.e., flying aircraft like the F-117A Stealth Fighter and other high-performance aircraft like the F-111 A, E, F and EF, and T-38 Talon. Over the last several years, the author found himself recalling funny sayings, quotes, stories and then writing them down. These memories somehow materialized over the course of several years. Some of the humor is downright disgusting, and depending on your sense of humor, you may be one of those people who want to banish this book to the deepest reaches of hell! If you fall into this category, you might not want to read it. I’ve warned you. You gotta love that kind of talk. So sit back, get ready, strap in, and push the throttles and afterburner into “full grunt.” Just don’t break the speed of sound over a congested area in a foreign country, like the author almost did, or get whacked by a seagull during a bomb run at 540 mph and 300 feet above the water—no problem initially, but the engine died about an hour later. Enjoy the book. You’ve never read anything like it.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln . . . at one point, they all ran for president. And so is Vanessa Rothrock’s mother! As if being 12 3/4 isn’t bad enough, Vanessa Rothrock’s mother is running for president and it’s ruining her life. Isn’t it enough that her enormous feet trip her up all the time, even on stage during the school spelling bee? Isn’t it enough that Reginald Trumball, love of Vanessa’s pathetic life, read her personal and private list of deficiencies to some boy she doesn’t even know? And that the Boob Fairy hasn’t visited her even once?! Doesn’t Mom realize that Vanessa needs her more than the rest of the country? More importantly, doesn’t she realize that she may be in grave danger? Vanessa's receiving threatening notes at school–notes that imply some psycho has it out for her mother at the Democratic National Convention. Vanessa might be the only person who can save her. But does she have the courage to do what that requires? This hilarious debut novel about a girl who gets thrust into the campaign trail will have you laughing out loud and thanking your lucky stars that your mom never decided to enter a national election. “Gephart maintains the humor even as the stakes rise. . . . An intelligent look at primaries, caucuses and nominating conventions.” –Publishers Weekly “Readers learn about the political process and motivations of people who work in this milieu.” –SLJ