Synopses & Reviews
"The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness is a remarkable journey. I laughed. I cried. I got another cat." — Lily Tomlin
Is there a secret to happiness? Beloved comedian Paula Poundstone conducts a series of "thoroughly scientific" experiments to find out, offering herself up as a guinea pig and recording her data for the benefit of all humankind. Armed with her unique brand of self-deprecating wit and the scientific method, in each chapter Paula tries out a different get-happy hypothesis. She gets in shape with taekwondo. She drives fast behind the wheel of a Lamborghini. She communes with nature while camping with her daughter. Swing dancing? Meditation? Volunteering? Does any of it bring her happiness? And more important, can the happiness last when she returns to the daily demands of her chaotic life?
The results are irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny, and pointedly relevant to our times. The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness is both a a hilarious story of jumping into new experiences with both feet and a surprisingly poignant tale of a working mother raising three kids. Paula is a master of her craft. Her comedic brilliance, served up in abundance in this book, has been compared to that of George Carlin, Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin, and David Sedaris.
Review
"Paula Poundstone is the funniest human being I have ever known. Everything she does, thinks, or says is hilarious. She is made of funny. If you chopped her into bits, each piece would be hilarious. (But don’t.) Air becomes funny having been breathed by her. So, thus and naturally, this book is hilarious. Even the punctuation is a scream. Buy it." Peter Sagal, host, "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!" and author of The Book of Vice
Review
"If you haven't met Paula Poundstone, I highly recommend that you get to know her now. I flew through her book and laughed at every page." Dick Van Dyke
Review
"Reading Paula Poundstone's The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, I laughed until I got fit, wired, earthy, organized, you-name-it. I'm happy now. I've discovered that the secret to happiness is to let Paula do all these things while I read her hilarious book about it." P.J. O’Rourke
Review
"The bravest and best improv comic of our time has now done the impossible and created a Work of Literature that has the wild hairy spirit of performance about it. Sort of like Emmy Dickinson & Her Sensational Cat Circus. Or Hermie Melville & His Singing Whale. The whole family comes in for the price of one ticket and there is not a bad seat in the house." Garrison Keillor
About the Author
One of the great humorists of our time, Paula Poundstone was the first woman to win the cable ACE for best stand-up comedy special and the first woman to perform stand-up at the prestigious White House Correspondents dinner. She is ranked in Comedy Central’s Top 100 Comics of All Time, has had numerous HBO specials, and has won an Emmy Award. She is a panelist on the popular NPR program Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and tours regularly throughout the country as a stand-up comic. Her previous book, There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say, was published in 2006.