From Publishers Weekly
Comedy, pathos and politics intertwine in this occasionally lewd 'n' crude but surprisingly heartfelt memoir. Black, a playwright, stand-up comedian and Daily Show correspondent, looks back on his youth as a budding nonconformist while delivering comic rants against such tempting targets as Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Halloween, cell phones and Starbucks, and reflecting on his comic influences (a big one, reprinted here, was an obscene satire by Paul Krassner in which Lyndon Johnson violates John Kennedy's corpse). Since Black's worldview, he avows, has not changed much since his 20s, the book centers on his Vietnam-era student days and experiences with a start-up theater troupe. Hilarious experiences with pot and LSD take center stage, but he also recounts his dabblings in radical politics ("I was in the very heart of my youth. And my country was bombing the snot out of a little tiny country in Southeast Asia, and there but for the grace of God, I could have been lying in a pool of blood. It made me want to do something") and the exhilaration of his first dramatic triumphs. These formative years left him with the mouth of a shock-jock and the heart of a liberal, expressed in a profane attack on the anti–gay marriage backlash, an admission that "I like seeing nineteen-year-olds alive and stoned in college" instead of packed off to war, and an appreciation of public works projects that stimulate the economy by building some "Big Fucking Thing." He's no policy wonk, that's for sure—and that's why his many fans love him so much. Funny photos. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
As cable-TV addicts know, comedian and playwright Black's shtick is acerbically ranting about the American scene. As with many a finger-stabbing pundit, his strategy is to erect a straw man, smite it about the head and shoulders, ignite it, and move on (think George Carlin without the crinkly smile and palpable empathy). The short pieces here are perfect for the attention spans of devotees of the TV punditocracy and for episodic reading. Among Black's best rants are a withering appraisal of Starbucks (inspired by the confounding sight of two across the street from each other in Houston), a gleeful deconstruction of high-school guidance counseling, and his take on the junior-high-school experience ("If there is a Hell, it is modeled after junior high"). Energetic and peppery, much of what Black says is as original as it is scathing. Whether his book remains appealing beyond the current cultural moment is an open question; but right now readers interested in strongly satirical social commentary are being well served by Citizen Black. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
You've seen him on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart offering up his trademark angry observational humor on everything from politics to pop culture. You've seen his energetic stand-up performances on HBO, Comedy Central, and in venues across the globe. Now, for the first time, Lewis Black translates his volcanic eruptions into book form in Nothing's Sacred, a collection of rants against stupidity and authority, which oftentimes go hand in hand. With subversive wit and intellectual honesty, Lewis examines the events of his life that shaped his antiauthoritarian point of view and developed his comedic perspective. Growing up in 1950s suburbia when father knew best and there was a sitcom to prove it, he began to regard authority with a jaundiced eye at an early age. And as that sentiment grew stronger with each passing year, so did his ability to hone in on the absurd. True to form, he puts common sense above ideology and distills hilarious, biting commentary on all things politically and culturally relevant. "No one is safe from Lewis Black's comic missiles." (New York Times) You have been warned....

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction: Why I Hate Authority What am I doing writing a book? I can't sit still for that long. For reasons that now escape me, I wanted to be a foreign service officer. Who knows, maybe I thought it was glamorous, or maybe the idea of travel just appealed to me. (I doubt I was really interested in shaping American foreign policy; that sounded too much like work.) I soon discovered how many requirements there were to qualify for a job in foreign service, and that's when I decided that I wanted to be a writer, because there were no requirements. All you had to say was, "I am a writer," and you became one. You didn't even have to write anything. You could just sit in a coffee shop with a notebook and stare into space, with a slightly bemused look on your face, judging the weight of the world with a jaundiced eye. As you can see, you can be completely full of shit and still be a writer. Okay, maybe that's the one requirement. I also thought it was going to be a great way to meet girls, but it wasn't -- probably because as I was staring into space, I no doubt looked mildly retarded. You see, I wanted to write plays, which in retrospect is a lot harder than learning Mandarin, I think. How I ended up in this delusional state shall be saved for another time. Eventually I began to fill the pages in front of me with words. It was exciting. It was romantic. And yet I felt like I was losing my mind, listening to voices in my head while trying to overcome years of lethargy by sitting and stewing in my own juices for hours. My brain was constantly humming with a little voice that would cry out, "Are you insane? Who would want to read this drivel of yours, let alone perform it? There are real jobs even you can do and contribute to society. You are insane, aren't you? You just want to end up in an asylum somewhere, where they will take care of you." And in the twenty or so years that I wrote plays, I made less than I would have if I had chosen to be a migrant worker. And so after years of playwriting, I became a successful comic. Go figure. So imagine my surprise when Steve, my agent, called and asked me if I wanted to write a book. Without hesitation I said, "Of course I want to write a book." But my brain was shouting, "You're insane." Doesn't everyone feel they can write a book? Doesn't everyone feel that with just a few tens of thousands of well-chosen words they could put the earth right back onto its proper axis? (Maybe that's not the case nowadays; maybe everyone just wants to be on a reality TV show and have people write about them.) With so many more places to drink coffee nowadays, I leaped at the opportunity to share my insights with the world. Ask someone to write a book and that person's ego knows no bounds. After years of working as a comic, I know how to talk funny. But can I write funny? So that the words leap off the page in such a way that the reader is filled with glee? You don't know till you try, and there are legions of critics ready to tell you that you aren't funny in the least. So what was I going to write about...? Certainly not politics, as the shelves are filled with wonderfully funny works that have successfully covered that subject, by writers from Art Buchwald to P. J. O'Rourke to Michael Moore. I am no David Sedaris or Dave Barry or Mark Twain. Jesus, Mark Twain -- not only was he funny, but he's dead and he's still funny. I picked up a cup of coffee and stared off into space. It's not so romantic when you actually have to have thoughts and write them down, especially now that I apparently had a severe case of ADD. My head just couldn't wrap itself around a topic, because I got bored immediately with any topic that came to mind. In my desperation to come up with an appropriate subject, I even considered writing about interior decorating, which I know nothing about. Then one day, while sitting on a plane, headed to God knows where, I had a revelation. I am constantly in the air sitting next to guys who are about my age, and they talk to me as if I am twenty years younger than they are. And they seem twenty years older than I am. They always seem to have sticks up their asses. Where was my stick, I wondered? Where did the stick come from? Was there something inherent in being an adult that I had missed? Why did so many of my generation seem to have gone on to become joyless and officious snots? How could Dick Cheney and George W. Bush be around my age and yet it was as if we were living in parallel universes? Was there something wrong with me that when I heard the words "get on board" I would rather drown? It's not a question of politics. It's deeper than that. It has to do with our points of view, the way we look at the world. Where did mine come from? That's what this book is about. Maybe I am emotionally stunted, but by the time I was in my early twenties I had developed the way I look at life, and it hasn't changed much since then. This is the road I traveled, as I remember it -- which may not always be accurate, since as I have gotten older my memory has become a blender. And so we begin. Copyright © 2005 by Lewis Black

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly