If you're not already acquainted--nay, infatuated--with the works of the man who the New York Times calls "the funniest man in America," you can get cracking right now with this all-time favorite collection of Dave Barry's humor columns. Dave Barry's Bad Habits won't rot your teeth, cause your insurance premiums to go up, or make your kids go cross-eyed if they sit too close to it. It will, however, make you laugh so hard your middle actually moves (the best exercise, and possibly the only kind you'll be interested in after forty). Here, preserved for all time, are Barry's profoundest musings on such topics as how to get kids to stop smoking (eliminate tenth grade), what to do if your car is making loud noises (turn up the radio), and a solution to the battle of the sexes (let the men do housework, say, for the next six thousand years to even things up). Together they serve to expose the little insanities of everyday life and assure us that we're not completely alone in a world gone mad. "To most people, news means information about events that affect a lot of people. On local TV news shows, news means anything that you can take a picture of, especially if a local TV News Personality can stand in front of it." Dave Barry is the modern master of silliness; there's a party in his pen. While he's more recently branched out into books and magazine articles, the form where he shines brightest is the newspaper column. Dave Barry's Bad Habits is a cracking-good collection of his syndicated column taken from the early 1980s. And Barry at his best can stand among the greatest humorists America has produced. First of all, let me assure you that we are not in a depression. The key economic indicator of a depression is that you suddenly start seeing a lot of primitive black-and-white newsreel films of people wearing old-fashioned hats and overcoats and forming lines in the streets of major cities to obtain bread. So far, all the lines of people have been videotaped in color, which is the sign of a stable economy. Also, the people have not been lining up for bread. They have been lining up for cheese, which the government has several million tons of." When you're looking for a good belly laugh, sometimes only Dave Barry will do. Dave Barry's Bad Habits skates from topic to topic, always light, always rambunctious. For the dedicated fan, it's an essential volume; for the rest, it's yet more evidence that Barry is the Zen master of written mirth. --Michael Gerber “ Bad Habits --funny book. Read it.” ― Gannett News Service “Dave Barry is nothing less thatn the smart-aleck Peter Pan of American letters.” ― the Seattle Times “Dave Barry is the guru of guffaws.” ― the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “He has the ability to charm us with nonsense so compelling that it almost makes sense.” ― Houston Chronicle Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize–winning humor writer whose columns and essays have appeared in hundreds of newspapers over the past thirty-five years. He has also written a number of New York Times bestselling humor books, including Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer Is Much Faster).