Carl Reiner

When Nat Noland, a successful romance novelist, has heated debates with himself, his wife Glennie signs him up with Dr. Frucht, a Viennese psychiatrist. Nat, who was adopted, learns about his dancer mother, doctor father and his maternal grandfather.

More than once, friends of Carl Reiner said, "You ought to write those things down." And at the age of eighty, Carl finally did. In this funny and engaging memoir, Reiner recounts his show business life in short comic takes. After answering an ad for free acting classes, he forsook a budding vocation as a machinist for an acting career. Reiner recalls the highlights of the succeeding decades: his first sweaty audition - impersonating a dog impersonating...

While Hank Morgan, Twain's time-displaced Yankee traveller, keeps up a steady stream of flippancies, founding the first tabloid, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, and organizing a game of baseball between armour-clad knights, he also keeps up a steady commentary on the social mores of King Arthur's court, criticizing the hereditary social classes and state church still strong in the Victorian England of Twain's own day, and championing...

Romance novelist, Nat Noland, is suffering from writer's block when he makes up a silly email address sending a list to God of ideas for punishments. When God replies, Nat, a die hard atheist is shocked. Now, Nat keeps getting messages from God and he's having a very hard time concentrating on his new novel.

"On the road to womanhood in the '70's, Vivian ... is encountering two big bumps: her strangely nomadic family--always on the move, yet desperate to stay in the Beverly Hills school district--and her blossoming sexuality. Add Viv's vivacious cousin ... to the mix, and you've got an explosive coming-of-age story that proves you don't have to be rich to have first-class fun"--Verso of container.