Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #168555 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-05
• Released on: 2006-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.com
Book Description:
Bill Maher is on the forefront of the new wave of comedians who have begun to influence and shape political debate through their comedy. He is best known not just for being funny, but for advocating truth over sensitivity and taking on the political establishment. Maher first came to national attention as the host of the hit ABC-TV program Politically Incorrect, where he offered a combustible mixture of irreverence and acerbic humor that helped him to garner a loyal following, as well as a reputation for being a controversial bad boy.

Bill Maher's popular new HBO television show, Real Time, has put Maher more front and center than ever before. Particularly one regular segment on the show, entitled "New Rules," has been a hit with his ever-growing legion of fans. It is the part of the show during which Maher takes serious aim, bringing all of his intelligence, incisiveness, wit, and his signature exasperation to bear on topics ranging from cell phones ("I don't need my cell phone to take pictures or access the Internet. I just need it to make a phone call. From everywhere! Not just the places it likes!") to fast food ("No McDonald's in hospitals. I'm not kidding!) to the conservative agenda ("Stop claiming it's an agenda. It's not an agenda. It's a random collection of laws that your corporate donors paid you to pass.")

His new book, the first since his bestselling When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden, brings these brilliantly conceived riffs and rants to the written page. Appropriately titled New Rules, the book will collect some of the best of the rules derived from previously written material and will also contain substantial new material, including some longer form "editorials"--of course with a twist and bite that only Bill Maher can deliver.

In New Rules: Polite Musings of a Timid Observer, Bill Maher skewers celebrity, pop culture, and politics in his classic acerbic style. With a new season of Real Time with Bill Maher and an upcoming HBO Special (his sixth), Bill Maher: I'm Swiss, on deck, Maher also found the time to host Amazon.com's 10th Anniversary Concert at Seattle's Benaroya Hall. Amazon.com caught up with Maher upon his return to Los Angeles to talk about the book, the comic's night-table reading habits, the Internet, and what's wrong with the media.

Read our Amazon.com interview with Bill Maher

Books:
When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden	Does Anybody Have a Problem with That?	True Story: A Novel

DVDs:
Bill Maher: I'm Swiss (DVD)	Bill Maher: Victory Begins at Home (DVD)	Bill Maher: Be More Cynical (DVD)

From Publishers Weekly
The new rules TV host Maher establishes for "a self-obsessed, success-by-any-means, get-mine culture" make a convincing case for Maher's claim that everyone but him is crazy. Zingers about fads like low-carb dieting and flat-screen televisions ("Congratulations-you just paid $10,000 to watch Hogan's Heroes") poke fun at appearance-obsessed, megalomaniacal American consumers, and his takes on current news stories such as Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride from Georgia, and the popular television shows Desperate Housewives and Growing Up Gotti ("You don't get a TV show because Grandpa killed people") are clever jabs at the media and the entertainment industry. But Maher is at his best when he addresses controversial political issues by making a serious point without sacrificing the wisecracks. He slips a cheeky remark about George Bush's past into his discussion of brutal conditions in prisons, and points out that the No Child Left Behind law has created "pushouts": poor-performing students who Maher says schools put in "phony categories like 'transferred' or 'enrolled in GED' or 'dating Demi Moore'" in order to meet requirements to receive federal funding. Though Maher's rules are sometimes just whiny (he complains about room service personnel not knowing what kind of soup is available) and he repeats a few tired jokes (variations of "you want to spend your millions on a worthless cause, try donating it to the Democrats" appear several times), his views on the state of contemporary political and social culture are bound to cause a few laugh-out-loud moments.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Fans of Maher's HBO show, Real Time, are familiar with the hysterically funny segment New Rules, in which the host suggests caustic corrective measures for some of the most egregious stupidities to emerge from popular and political culture. Maher's new rule on Bob Dylan? "Bob Dylan must stop denying he was the voice of a generation. Bob, that's not something you get to decide. It's fate and you were it. If your generation could actually choose a voice, don't you think they'd have picked one better than yours?" On Queen Elizabeth and William Rehnquist: "Just because you have a job for life doesn't mean you have to do it for life. For everything there is a season . . . a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to pack it in." Inevitably, since this is a compilation of bits used on the show, some items seem a little stale (the 2004 election), and all suffer from the fact that they were meant to be heard with Maher's distinctive, dismissive inflections ringing in one's ears. Yet, despite the limitations, this is still funnier than most humor books out there. Even the subject headings add additional yuks. A New Rule on thieving monkeys, for example, lands in a category called "Felonious Monks." Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Bill Maher continues to amaze
This is the funniest book I have ever read! It cracked me up continually. I reread it and had the same response. Opinionated, politically incorrect always, but hilarious! Keep it up Bill!

So True and So Politically Incorrect
If I didn't feel like going out on a Friday night, I was watching "Real Time with Bill Maher." When I did feel like going out on a Friday night, I set the timer for "Real Time with Bill Maher." I love this dude, and I'm tapping my fingers now that his show is off for the season! He and I agree on so many issues, including legalizing same-sex marriage, the Bush administration, religion, Republicans being busybodies, and the injustice in the prison system. It's almost like I never have to open my mouth again when it comes to politics. I can just tell folks to watch "Real Time with Bill Maher" and get all my thoughts out. This is the ONE political host who would talk about the truth of the Jena 6. As much as I support Obama, Bill Maher spoke louder and prouder about it. In addition to that, he always has guests that I'm interested in learning more about as well as some of my favorite people (ex. Mos Def and Cornell West).

While there are times when I disagree with him (MySpace fight, all black folks loving gin and juice [that's so mean!], all Democrats being spineless), I can respect his views even if I (very seldomly) don't agree with him. At the end of his show, the New Rules always make me laugh. I have yet to watch his show and not leaned over laughing so hard that I didn't have to wipe my eyes.

If you want to know the truth about the justice system, please check out his show on HBO or his website. And if you want to peek into this book, look in the Y section under "Hard Cell." That one is the most onpoint of all of his rules!

A plunger for the clogged up American Dialogue

Here in one compendium is a list of Bill's most irreverent and biting witticisms, a virtual armory of ammunition to be used against "wrong-thinkers," the "unenlightened," the "pseudo-religious" and the "pseudo-patriotic."

Bill's "New Rules" condenses a lot of what is wrong with this nation into bite size easily digestible nuggets that have the added advantage of packing the truth into a container with a very potent punch.

The rules range across the waterfront, "goring" all sacred cows along the way. He proves that he is not scared of the "jack-booted," "politically correct," "storm-troopers" no matter what color their "group-think identity jersey" may be - including in his own liberal colors.

In our increasingly divided and constipated national dialogue, no voice is needed more, nor speaks the truth with more eloquence or potency than does Bill Maher's. Like Chris Rock, Arianna Huffington, and a handful of others, and in the same vein as the late great Richard Pryor, Bill is always swimming upstream in the cesspool, and ever-rowing against the stifling lock-step colonized constipated consensus, hoping to shed a bit of light wherever he can. His HBO Specials should be mandatory for anyone who still cares about the nation's mental health.

Here with "The New Rules" as his plunger, he tries mightily to unclog the constipated national dialogue. And in doing so, he is increasingly becoming not just a national treasure, but a necessary one as well.

Five stars for a valiant effort.