A collection of satirical essays by Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" poking fun at various famous people. Maybe its because I read this over twenty years after its publication, but I didn't find many of these essays all that funny. In fact, I found most of them rather dull. It was disappointing because I really enjoy Jon Stewart on TV, but I guess his humor is best delivered in spoken, not written form.

Jon Stewart is one of the great comic minds of the modern era. With his ability to empathize with the common man and his cathartic attacks against the incompetence within modern government, Stewart put the Daily Show on the map, turning the once farcical program (under original host Craig Kilborn) into a cultural touchstone and quasi-legitimate source of news and commentary.

Glimmers of what Stewart would become exist in this book, but not as many as you would hope from someone with such astute comic timing and incisive wit as Stewart. A student of American history and pop culture, Stewart takes jabs at the Kennedy family, Hanson, Bill Gates, and Princess Diana (with the strongest essay, in my opinion, coming from "Pen Pals," an imaginary pen pal relationship between Princess Diana and Mother Teresa which has one of the darkest comic endings I've seen in such a short essay).

Sadly, like much of the Daily Show's news-based humor, the book hasn't aged well, with references to long-obscure ephemera as AOL, the Taco Bell chihuahua, and Larry King Live. Even worse are some of the original essays, including a bland essay about a man who brought a Frankenstein's Monster to his high school reunion, a treatise on how to modernize Judaism, and a listicle about five children under five who had great potential (a send-up of those 30 under 30-type articles that definitely misses the mark). Here, Stewart reminded me that he was still fresh off of numerous stints hosting and featuring in MTV quiz shows and his own talk shows in the mid-to-late 90's, and had some of that biting, Gen-X style dark humor that permeated airwaves during the time. This doesn't fit Jon Stewart; he is better as a wry, earnest commentator that breaks up the pretentiousness of modern government. And sadly, this book just doesn't show that.

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 with young Jon Stewart, but because I've got a thing for story collections by people who are not primarily thought of as writers. Jesse Eisenberg, for example, has an excellent collection called Bream Gives Me Hiccups. And though stand-up comedy invariably requires a lot of writing, I think I enjoyed Patton Oswalt's written work as much as I enjoyed his performed work.

So how is Jon Stewart's collection? Good! I just don't remember any concrete details of it. But I do remember the smarm, and I remember the scathing wit. How politically-charged Stewart's always been. It was surprising. But awesome.

Absolutely check this one out. Definitely a reread for me.

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 been a hoot when Hanson was relevant pop band, but my I was well into it before even knowing what was being parodied-then it was hilarious).

If you enjoy Stewart's witty tirades on his show, this book will entertain the heck out of you for a couple hours.

I thought this was really funny. It was a gift, so I wasn't nessarily expecting much, and since the back cover called it a collection of essays, I assumed it was another of those "That One Pundit Writes the Kind of Stuff He Says on TV" books. But this is fiction written before Stewart hosted TDS, so it wasn't what you'd think.

Some of the cultural references are really specific, and I can see why that turns some readers off. The story about the Kennedys is only really funny if you know a lot of Kennedy trivia, and "Martha Stewart's Vagina" probably requires some prior experience reading her magazine. And I can't decide if I feel sorry or not for anyone who doesn't remember the early days of AOL chatrooms well enough to relate to those bits.

Made me laugh :)

A ridiculous collection of stories that showcase homeboy's creativity. It gets a bit tired from time to time but certainly worth reading.

i finished this a few days ago and only then realized how i was relating some of it to things that i was finding funny. how this book helped me understand the how and why some things are funny to me, and how to build off of that. which is in itself funny, since that's certainly not the point of this book, but as someone who gets a high off making people laugh, it certainly was a nice bonus for my personage.

as to the contents...this book's first two chapters are pretty uneven, and while there are a few others that follow suit, the rest...heeeelarious. much snickering commenced. really good if you're TDS fan too, so you can really hear where stewart's inflections would likely be.

Maybe 4 or 5 giggles in the whole book. Some clever ideas. At least it was short.

I finished this book sooner than expected, partly because it has short easy chapters & partly because I did find my self skipping bits.
I didn't know some of the names in the book but maybe I'm just ignorant...should I know Sheldon Stein? Well, even though I don't (sorry, Sheldon!) that chapter, Revenge is a dish best served cold amused me. I also liked The Devil & Bill Gates & the Last Supper.

However, Martha Stewart's Vagina & Da Vinci's Notebook were ones where I found myself skipping bits (I found the writing in the Notebook hard to read....must be old age creeping up on me!). The Recipe I just didn't get! That however is not an unusual feature of short stories for me...

Anyhow, the bits I did like made me laugh...but I've just one question - where were the naked pictures? That might have got it more stars ;o)

This 1998 book (which has no illustrations in it) by the host of The Daily Show is, to put it mildly, insane. Entertainment Weekly commented "You've got to be smart to be a smart-ass." The 19 essays in this book have wonderful titles like "Martha Stewart's Vagina," "The Last Supper, or the Dead Waiter," "Vincent and Theo on AOL," and "Adolf Hitler: The Larry King Interview" among others. Stewart covers politics, religion, and celebrity with the acerbic with that made him such a cultural icon during his run on The Daily Show. It makes a great bathroom 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 is amusing, perplexing, and thought-provoking, but it's not nearly as "laugh-out-loud hilarious" as the cover blurb would have you believe.

Two stars because it's well-written, but not as funny as you'd expect from Stewart.