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

Not for me.

decent enough amusing essays part based on celebrities...however sometimes the targets don't translate that well to the U.K. audience so there where times were I sort of got the joke...but just barely...
However there where enough moments that raised a smile to make me persevere.

Okay, I'm sad. I love Jon Stewart (and Christ do I miss him right now!). But I didn't like this book. I absolutely got what was supposed to be funny. I think I got nearly 100% of the jokes (minus the references that kid born when this book came out could never get). But it just wasn't my brand of humor. Apparently not even close. I don't even feel like I got/enjoyed the wit of it. I got slight bits of commentary on society, but I feel like I missed a lot of what he was trying to say. Honestly, I had to plod through this whole book, and the only reason why I bothered doing so is because it was pretty short and the essays were all shorter than I'd expected. I laughed maybe one or two times in this book. Which is better than nothing but...It's pretty damn close to nothing.

Jon Stewart shares several laugh-out-loud essays including things as odd as the waiter at the Last Supper. Stewart's is truly a surreal mind, and it's so much fun when he lets us peek inside.

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 just dropping out of the women each day. This is a sentiment seriously held by some people. I had the misfortune to hear this from a woman when talking about the 'other' group of people in their country. And I know Stewart doesn't share this, probably tries to show how wrong and absurd it is by making fun of it, but I still couldn't dislike the very first writing in the book.

The one with Princess Diana fangirling about Mother Theresa was another one where I get what he wants to tell but I still don't like the way he is doing it. It might actually be really hurtful, undeservedly so. I don't have a problem with jokes on people's real asshole behaviour, they have to be called out on them. But I don't think it's acceptable to make fun of innocent real people, even if it's obviously far-fetched and is used in order to point at the shitty behaviour of others. I don't think the goal justifies the means.

With all that said, the book had me smirking a couple of times, I quite liked all the pieces in the last two-thirds of it, but it has never been a laugh-out-loud read.

I find Jon Stewart's (other) work brilliant, but I found this book far from "laugh-out-loud hilarious".

Dumb

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 me.

I've flipped through "America" and found it kinda, well, dumb to be honest. Maybe I didn't find the "meat" of it. I added Naked Pictures to my reading list, curious as to what it would contain.

Having read it, I have to say it was a lot like the "Daily Show". The book is a series of short essays, fake transcripts, and assorted brain spewing. There are parts that are pointed commentary on an issue or situation, and there are parts that are "fluff satire" that really are just silly for the sake of being silly, without much substance.

Overall, it was a great distraction, something to keep the brain busy during particularly boring shows at work. ;) If you're a fan of the "Daily Show" you'll enjoy this incarnation of Stewart's humor.

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 Cold.” Jon Stewart has a fine sense of humor, with a superb sense of timing.

Some of these are very much products of their time--the late 90's. Remember Hanson? AOL? And yet, for every moment that makes you think, “Wow! This book is old,” there are at least a dozen where you laugh and say, “How true!” Recommended!

This was a fun quick read! Once again I sorted my “to read” list by date added and grabbed one of the oldest books on the list – this one since February 2009! It’s funny that I put this on my list a decade after it was published, and then waited another 8 years to read it.  And weird to read pre-09/11, pre-most of the internet, pre-jaded old man, pre-when I was actually watching his show in college Jon Stewart.

An interesting mix of stories. Not sure what I was expecting – non-fiction observational humor I think given the title and his work on the Daily Show, when these turned out to be fictional but some semi-historically based (at least in some details) short stories. Hit a tone somewhere between Dave Barry (as in Dave Barry Slept Here) and David Sedaris for me. Quick read, mostly funny, very little I found objectionable – though I think present day Jon Stewart would have cut some of the more sexist lines, even when they were uttered by unappealing characters. I like to think so anyway, since he’s hung out with me in my living room so many times now.

The biggest stretches for me were the stories about JFK and Gerald Ford. Since I was born in 1985, I don’t have a lot of reference points for those two! But I understood the characterizations well enough once I caught on. I really liked the Jewish bits in the stories, and heard them all in Stewart’s old Jewish lady voice in my head. Some of the material was so dated at this point, 18 years later! Probably only worth picking up if you’re a big Stewart fan, but I enjoyed it and got through it super quick.

meh. got it for free at the Book Thing. read it in two days. dumping it back there.