Planet Funny

Planet Funny
Author: Ken Jennings
Publisher: Scribner
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2019-07-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501100602

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year The witty and exuberant New York Times bestselling author and record-setting Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings relays the history of humor in “lively, insightful, and crawling with goofy factlings,” (Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go Bernadette)—from fart jokes on clay Sumerian tablets to the latest Twitter gags and Facebook memes. Where once society’s most coveted trait might have been strength or intelligence or honor, today, in a clear sign of evolution sliding off the trails, it is being funny. Yes, funniness. Consider: Super Bowl commercials don’t try to sell you anymore; they try to make you laugh. Airline safety tutorials—those terrifying laminated cards about the possibilities of fire, explosion, depressurization, and drowning—have been replaced by joke-filled videos with multimillion-dollar budgets and dance routines. Thanks to social media, we now have a whole Twitterverse of amateur comedians riffing around the world at all hours of the day—and many of them even get popular enough online to go pro and take over TV. In his “smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny” (Booklist, starred review) Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn’t—to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. “Fascinating, entertaining and—I’m being dead serious here—important” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically), Planet Funny is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.

The Answer Is . . .

The Answer Is . . .
Author: Alex Trebek
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-07-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1982157992

A RECOMMENDED SUMMER READ BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, TIME, AND NEWSWEEK Longtime Jeopardy! host and television icon Alex Trebek reflects on his life and career. Since debuting as the host of Jeopardy! in 1984, Alex Trebek has been something like a family member to millions of television viewers, bringing entertainment and education into their homes five nights a week. Last year, he made the stunning announcement that he had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. What followed was an incredible outpouring of love and kindness. Social media was flooded with messages of support, and the Jeopardy! studio received boxes of cards and letters offering guidance, encouragement, and prayers. For over three decades, Trebek had resisted countless appeals to write a book about his life. Yet he was moved so much by all the goodwill, he felt compelled to finally share his story. “I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” he writes in The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life. The book combines illuminating personal anecdotes with Trebek’s thoughts on a range of topics, including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality, and philanthropy. Trebek also addresses the questions he gets asked most often by Jeopardy! fans, such as what prompted him to shave his signature mustache, his insights on legendary players like Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer, and his opinion of Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live impersonation. The book uses a novel structure inspired by Jeopardy!, with each chapter title in the form of a question, and features dozens of never-before-seen photos that candidly capture Trebek over the years. This wise, charming, and inspiring book is further evidence why Trebek has long been considered one of the most beloved and respected figures in entertainment.

Jeopardy in the Courtroom

Jeopardy in the Courtroom
Author: Stephen J. Ceci
Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1999
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9781557986320

The credibility of children's testimony is a highly debated topic in America's courtrooms, universities, and living rooms. Does the ingenuousness of children assure that their testimony will always be truthful? Or are children easily misled by overzealous investigators and therapists into making untrue allegations? Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck contend that the truth falls somewhere between these extremes. Using case studies ranging from the Salem Witch Hunt to the Little Rascals Day Care case to illustrate their argument, Jeopardy in the Courtroom draws from the vast corpus of scientific research to clarify what is most relevant for evaluating and understanding children's statements made in the legal arena.

The Essays of Leonard Michaels

The Essays of Leonard Michaels
Author: Leonard Michaels
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1429933240

NONFICTION FROM "ONE OF THE STRONGEST AND MOST ARRESTING PROSE TALENTS OF HIS GENERATION" (LARRY MCMURTRY) Leonard Michaels was a writer of unfailing emotional honesty. His memoirs, originally scattered through his story collections, are among the most thrilling evocations of growing up in the New York of the 1950s and '60s—and of continuing to grow up, in the cultural turmoil of the '70s and '80s, as a writer, teacher, lover, and reader. The same honesty and excitement shine in Michaels's highly personal commentaries on culture and art. Whether he's asking what makes a story, reviewing the history of the word "relationship," or reflecting on sex in the movies, he is funny, penetrating, surprising, always alive on the page. The Essays of Leonard Michaels is the definitive collection of his nonfiction and shows, yet again, why Michaels was singled out for praise by fellow writers as diverse as Susan Sontag, Larry McMurtry, William Styron, and Charles Baxter. Beyond autobiography or criticism, it is the record of a sensibility and of a style that is unmatched in American letters.

The Constitution in Jeopardy

The Constitution in Jeopardy
Author: Russ Feingold
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1541701542

A former U.S. senator joins a legal scholar to examine a hushed effort to radically change our Constitution, offering a warning and a way forward. Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism—the nation's first ever—has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power. In this important book, Feingold and Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many focus solely on judicial and electoral avenues for change, such an approach is at odds with a cornerstone ideal of the Founding: that the People make constitutional law, directly. In an era defined by faction and rejection of long-held norms, The Constitution in Jeopardy examines the nature of constitutional change and asks urgent questions about what American democracy is, and should be.

Answers in the Form of Questions

Answers in the Form of Questions
Author: Claire McNear
Publisher: Twelve
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 9781538702307

What is the smartest, most celebrated game show of all time? In this insider's guide, discover the rich history of Jeopardy! -- the beloved game show that has shaped our culture and entertained audiences for years. Jeopardy! is a lot of things: record-setting game show, beloved family tradition, and proving ground for many of North America's best and brightest. Nearly four decades into its current edition, Jeopardy! now finds itself facing unprecedented change. This is the chronicle of how the show became a cross-generational touchstone and where it's going next. ANSWERS IN THE FORM OF QUESTIONS dives deep behind the scenes, with longtime host Alex Trebek talking about his life and legacy and the show's producers and writers explaining how they put together the nightly game. Readers will travel to bar trivia showdowns with the show's biggest winners and training sessions with trivia whizzes prepping for their shot onstage. And they'll discover new tales of the show's most notable moments-like the time the Clue Crew almost slid off a glacier-and learn how celebrity cameos and Saturday Night Live spoofs built a television mainstay. ANSWERS IN THE FORM OF QUESTIONS looks to the past -- and the future -- to explain what Jeopardy! really is: a tradition unlike any other.

Washington Reports

Washington Reports
Author: Washington (State). Supreme Court
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1094
Release: 2010
Genre: Law reports, digests, etc
ISBN:

Final Jeopardy

Final Jeopardy
Author: Stephen Baker
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2011-02-27
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0547519435

The “charming and terrifying” story of IBM’s breakthrough in artificial intelligence, from the Business Week technology writer and author of The Numerati (Publishers Weekly, starred review). For centuries, people have dreamed of creating a machine that thinks like a human. Scientists have made progress: computers can now beat chess grandmasters and help prevent terrorist attacks. Yet we still await a machine that exhibits the rich complexity of human thought—one that doesn’t just crunch numbers, or take us to a relevant web page, but understands and communicates with us. With the creation of Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy!-playing computer, we are one step closer to that goal. In Final Jeopardy, Stephen Baker traces the arc of Watson’s “life,” from its birth in the IBM labs to its big night on the podium. We meet Hollywood moguls and Jeopardy! masters, genius computer programmers and ambitious scientists, including Watson’s eccentric creator, David Ferrucci. We see how Watson’s breakthroughs and the future of artificial intelligence could transform medicine, law, marketing, and even science itself, as machines process huge amounts of data at lightning speed, answer our questions, and possibly come up with new hypotheses. As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world—and how they’ll disrupt it. “The place to go if you’re really interested in this version of the quest for creating Artificial Intelligence.” —The Seattle Times “Like Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine, Baker’s book finds us at the dawn of a singularity. It’s an excellent case study, and does good double duty as a Philip K. Dick scenario, too.” —Kirkus Reviews “Like a cross between Born Yesterday and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Baker’s narrative is both . . . an entertaining romp through the field of artificial intelligence—and a sobering glimpse of things to come.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

George Washington Remembers

George Washington Remembers
Author: George Washington
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780742533721

"George Washington Remembers makes this very personal and little-known document available for the first time and offers a glimpse of Washington in a self-reflective mood - a side of the man seldom seen in his other writings.