This collection from 1998 will be disappointing for most of Stewart's fans (I am one). The first story is a pretty good dissection of the Kennedy family mythos which nicely demonstrates Stewart's raunchy-but-good-natured wit. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is pretty pointless: juvenile, facile, and rarely funny. The stories seem to grope toward satire, but with neither the deserving targets nor the clear moral point of view that make the Daily Show so sharp, articulate, and entertaining. Th...

A very funny book and, along with Steve Martin's "Pure Drivel" and Chris Buckley's "Wry Martinis", my impetus to write my first (quite sloppy) collection of essays on pop culture, "Smirking into the Abyss".Jon juxtaposes some great cultural icons, such as the correspondences between Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, Vincent Van Gogh trying to communicate with his brother in an internet chat room, The Last Supper taking place in a trendy restaurant, Hitler guesting on "Larry King", and my favorit...

Sporadically amusing, but nowhere near as funny as I would have expected from Jon Stewart. Some of these essays had the potential to be truly, caustically funny—Martha Stewart's tips on how to tastefully decorate your vagina; Larry King interviewing Adolf Hitler—but others either suffered obviously from not being delivered orally by Stewart, with the timing and pacing and inflection that he does so well, or were just plain silly. The opening story in particular, the one about the Kennedys, was r...

I’ve allegedly read this before, but I'm not convinced. Goodreads records that I marked it as Read back in 2014, which means either that I read it sometime before that and added it shortly after joining the site when I went through and added all my reading logs, or that I meant to mark it as Want To Read and slipped up. Certainly wouldn't be the first time …I think I’d remember having previously read pieces like, “The Recipe”, or, “The Devil and William Gates,” or, “Revenge Is A Dish Best Served...

A short, entertaining read from the host of The Daily Show. Billed as a collection of "essays", it is an eclectic collection of fictional 3rd-person accounts from a variety of real and imagined characters. Not being familiar with the format going in, it took a chapter before I realized what I was reading. Once aware, pure funny. Only thing that dragged was fact that book is more than 10 years old, so several of the "topical" references are not only dated but confusing (Hanson chapter would have

This book has many hilarious stories. From a young jewish boy spending time at the Kennedy Compound toChristmas with the Hanson family(mmmbop)! Also, check out Larry King's interview with Hitler and not to mention Martha Stewart's decorative tips for a certain part of the female anatomy. I could not stop laughing at this book!

Humor. These short fiction pieces are supposed to be funny, and I did laugh a few times, but mostly I felt like something was missing. It looks and sounds like it should be funny: Martha Stewart's decorating tips for vaginas, Lady Di's correspondence with Mother Teresa, the secret Gerald Ford tapes ("Did you know both my names end in d?"), but in almost every case it feels like the joke's been lost in the translation. Stewart's a talented writer with a flair for comedic word choice, and the book...

I started as a fan of Jon Stewart during his run on MTV, and it just increased at a ridiculous speed between his comedy central special where he talks about going to the proctologist, this book, and eventually settling in with the Daily Show (I know, I know, I used to be obsessed with Craig Kilborne as well, so sue me). But this book is just hilarious and smart and really shows how brillant he is and would soon show.I used to lend people this book in good faith that they would return it, but it'...

This was a present from some friends, for which I am very thankful. It's a series of comedic essays, similar to Steve Martin's Pure Drivel or Woody Allen's Without Feathers, and it is quite funny. Not really laugh-out-loud funny, but funny. I think Stewart's comedy is best rendered as a spoken art. He's fantastic with inflection and timing, which unfortunately doesn't translate so well onto the page.Still and all, there's a lot of good stuff in here. "The Devil and William Gates" is excellent, a...

Is there a Yiddish word for "meh"? If so, I choose that word to describe this book.

Ah yes. Very dated, and you can see Jon Stewart was still smoking a lot of weed because he thought he was incredibly hilarious, but it was a nice throwback to the time I cannot remember and the Jon Stewart I never knew.

I loved Jon Stewart as the host of The Daily Show and had been looking forward to get my hands on this book for soooo long. That's never a good start. The expectations being so high, I was bound to be disappointed.There is this idea shared by some comedians, Ricky Gervais for instance, that nothing is off limits in comedy. I don't share this view. The first piece in this book made fun of the Kennedys' curse, how so many members die in various accidents, but it's alright as a couple of babies are...

Mostly not funny... one imagines that at the time of their original New Yorker publication, they were more relevant to current events and therefore more than mildly amusing.Still, you can definitely see Stewart's style emerging here, pre-Daily Show, which is interesting as an insight into his early career. His real comedic genius was yet to come.

I don't remember much, but I really like this book.For a long time, my only conception of Jon Stewart was as the host of The Daily Show.Then I found out about young Jon Stewart. And holy crap, what a contrast!Young Jon Stewart, like older Jon Stewart, is cool. But brooding. Cynical. I saw a clip of him interviewing George Carlin on (I think) MTV, and was amazed by both interviewer and interviewee.So naturally I had to read Naked Pictures of Famous People. Not just because I'd become enamored wit...

Quick read and very amusing.

Jon Stewart is brilliant in literary sense. Very funny and weirdly perfect.

I found this book in one of the shelves in my house and since I've been watching Colbert every day for a couple of years now (and sometimes Trevor Noah as well), I thought it was the right time to pick this upMy first thought was that this book was weird, some were just too weird, but good. I really like the one about Ford, somehow it rang true to the current American President (just with less tantrums); I also really enjoyed the one about the Last Supper - that was probably my favorite. The one...

I have relatives who are rabid fans of The Daily Show. I've watched clips now and then but never a full show. So when I came across Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart from before he was hosting The Daily Show I thought I should give it a read.This short book of satire has eighteen essays crammed into 163 pages. There are all number of different famous people from the Kennedys, the Hansons, Martha Stewart, Princess Diana and Mother Theresa, Hitler and Leonardo da Vinci among others. E...

"During the spring of 1935," the first entry begins, "I had the good fortune of making as my close acquaintance none other than John F. (Jack) Kennedy." Thus begins a romp through the fantastic and absurdly imagined worlds of the rich and famous, which I somehow discovered in the non-fiction section of my local library. Perhaps not as topical 10+ years on, Naked Pictures is still no less hilarious.Fans of the Daily Show will recognize Stewart's usual dry wit in dealing with celebrity, while fans...

I have to say that I *do* have more intellectual reading material on my list, but the first thing that I've gotten myself to finish lately is John Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People. I've only in the past year or so become a "Daily Show" viewer. I watched it many, many years ago, and not understanding much of politics and why the show's even supposed to be funny, I panned it. That said, I still usually fast-forward through the people that aren't JS. They just tend to annoy the piss out of...