2024 the best of george carlin review

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(as of Dec 01, 2024 23:40:08 UTC - Details)

As one of America's preeminent comedic voices, George Carlin saw it all throughout his extraordinary 50-year career and made fun of most of it. Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acerbic humor with never-before-told stories from his own life.

In 1993 George Carlin asked his friend and best-selling author Tony Hendra to help him write his autobiography. For almost 15 years, in scores of conversations, many of them recorded, the two discussed Carlin's life, times, and evolution as a major artist. When Carlin died at age 71 in June 2008 with the book still unpublished, Hendra set out to assemble it as his friend would have wanted. Last Words is the result, the rollicking, wrenching story of Carlin's life from birth - literally - to his final years, as well as a parting gift of laughter to the world of comedy he helped create.

George Carlin's journey to stardom began in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of New York's Upper West Side in the 1940s, where class and culture wars planted the seeds for some of his best-known material, including the notorious "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television".

His early conflicts, his long struggle with substance abuse, his turbulent relationships with his family, and his triumphs over catastrophic setbacks all fueled the unique comedic worldview he brought to the stage. From the heights of stardom to the low points few knew about, Last Words is told with the same razor-sharp honesty that made Carlin one of the best loved comedians in American history.

Reviewer: Kindle Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Still laughing
Review: I saw George in Vegas in '98 & was laughing loudly at his White people jokes. We were crammed in 8 per tiny table, facing each other. My seat was towards the stage so I turned left as I watched. It was only when I turned back, facing forward, to sip my drink, throat dry from big guffaws, that I saw my tablemates in the dim light, all of them, not laughing loudly like I was. I was stunned. Why didn't they laugh?Then I remembered I'm a brownie, a minority person & my people have been laughing at white people ways all my life. But we laugh at everyone, ourselves even. Even though I'm also white, Irish, to be specific, my fellow audience didn't know that because I look 100% Hawaiian. But some whites often mistook me for Mexican. I didn't want to get beat up as I was there alone until my sister's were gonna meet up with me. So I turned left again, back to facing George & kept laughing quietly, shoulders shaking, tears of mirth rolling down my face.Then I noticed all around me a sea of mostly white tourists, most also not laughing. My first ever live comedy show, with my favorite irreverent comic & I couldn't even laugh out loud.The White people bit ended, and the crowd as a whole, began to laugh out loud at George's other jokes.I was so uncomfortable when I realized I was surrounded by thousands of the kind of white people who couldn't laugh at their own inane tendencies, that I rushed out before the lights came on & forgot all about my plan to try to get backstage to meet George.Few days later my sisters & I go to see Bobcat Goldwaithe after he'd lost weight, in a tiny tiny near empty lounge & all three of us LOL. Losing weight jokes is fertile joke grounds for us women. There was no big white non laughing crowd around. We drank heartily, laughed, shrieked & cheered Bobcat onward. He made my sister spit out her drink whenever she would sip just as his punchlines hit. We 3 natives were so rambunctious, so appreciative of Bob's show, that we were making him laugh. He began to riff off of us in an intimate exchange. It was incredible. We wanted him to know he was a comedic genius, to us & he received that with grace & even more wit.My only regret is I didn't get to see Georgia like we saw Bobcat, in a tiny, near empty dim lit lounge where we could LOL and really immerse in his show. It was still the best, to me, to witness these comedy greats, regardless of the circumstances.

Reviewer: Mbear
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great for a George Carlin lover!
Review: A gift for my sister whose favorite comedian was George Carlin. She enjoyed this although sad at times learning about his personal life experiences.

Reviewer: Tim Knight
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Best Business Book I've Ever Read
Review: When I was in my teens and early 20s, I read a lot of business books, biographies, and magazines (such as Forbes). I believed - - quite incorrectly - - that by reading the wisdom, lessons, and teachings of various luminaries and success stories, I would learn the rules of business and increase my chances of success.In retrospect, I am pretty sure that 99% of that effort was a waste. Indeed, I got a business degree in college, and that was a waste as well. It would be far better, for those who elect to go to college, to either (a) learn how to think creatively; or (b) learn the mechanics of something concrete that one cannot simply intuit their way through. If you're going to design a bridge or perform heart surgery, yeah, you'd better go to school.So I stopped reading all that stuff a long, long time ago. I did buy and read the Steve Jobs biography (which I pre-ordered long before the man died) just because he's Steve Jobs. But the idea that some people seem to have that they can emulate someone's success by reading about their success is horribly misplaced and unsupported by facts.I was reminded of this because I just finished reading, for the second time, George Carlin's final book called, fittingly, Last Words.I had bought Last Words a couple of years ago and loved it, and I stuck it on a bookshelf. I saw it again a few days ago, and for no particular reason, I decided to read it again........and I couldn't put it down. The book is as sharp, clever, and captivating as any of Carlin's performances from the 1990s or 2000s. He has an amazing career arc, including terrible problems with drug use (as did as his wife and, not surprisingly, his daughter), poverty so severe he was living out of his car, tax woes that took decades to overcome, and more than a couple close calls with death.The most important thread in the whole tale is his development as a creative force. This didn't really begin to take root until the early 1980s, and it picked up pace in the early 1990s and started to make exponential gains. I have long admired both the quality of the material he wrote, some of which borders on genius, as well as his delivery, which was honed by decades of artistry over the course of thousands and thousands of live shows for millions of people.So why do I refer to this as a "business" book? Isn't it just a biography about a really great comedian? Well, in my own opinion, reading this book yielded more for me in terms of business insights than any of the dozens of books I went through from Harvard Business Press. To understand deeply Carlin's challenges, false starts, the dollars-and-cents cost of him watching the accounting side of what he was doing with his life - - it all adds up to a magnificent canvas representing nearly half a century of what was, in the end, not just a marvelous creative gift but a complex venture as well.

Reviewer: mathurac
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: George Carlin - The Master
Review: As expected, such a well written story of George Carlin. He was a comedy genius, astute observer of human nature and an absolute piercing analyst of politics and society. An absolute must read.

Reviewer: Stephen E Shoesmith
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: For anyone that has followed George.
Review: I have been a fan of George Carlin since I was around 10 yrs old when I found my dad's 33rpm record of Occupation: Foole. I had no idea what it was at the time but the many pictures of George on the cover in various weird poses grabbed my curiosity. I was hooked and laughing hysterically after only the first side of the album.It is nice to read this book, written in a style that assures you that George wrote it. It is also a pleasant surprise to read that many of the life experiences George related about his past in various sketches were true. Such as growing up in a place called "Morningside Heights" and hanging around in a neighborhood called by it's slang name "White Harlem">It is also shocking to know how many bad experiences George had throughout his life, including ones during his most successful years in comedy, that he kept hidden from his fans. He, of course, relates all these in the George Carlin no-nonsense way he has related everything else in his life.With the wisdom George spout forth in his many comedy routines, it is a shame that 1) he died so early and 2) more people have not woken up and realized how smart he really was. Anyone who has followed George during their life will find this book extremely entertaining, insightful, shocking and funny (as George always was.)

Reviewer: Basel Al Hraki
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Excellent book and in great shape. Got it a day later. Thanks.

Reviewer: Jose Oliveira
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Loved it!

Reviewer: The Reader
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Good product.

Reviewer: Anonymous
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Otimo!

Reviewer: Grazia
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: E' arrivato secondo i tempi previsti. Il libro era in perfette condizioni.