There are countless Humor courses, tutorials, articles available online, but for some, having a book is still a necessity to learn. This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. Humor That Works: The Missing Skill for Success and Happiness at Work (2019)
If you want to increase team productivity, relieve stress, and be happier at work, you could hire a bunch of workplace consultants, invest in scream therapy, and put Pharrell Williams on repeat—or you could just read Humor That Works.Written by Andrew Tarvin, the world’s first Humor Engineer, this a business book on humor. No, that’s not an oxymoron. It really is a business book and it really is about getting better results by having more fun. Because people who use humor in the workplace are more productive, less stressed, and happier. No joke;…
2. Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere: Tales of Humor and Healing from Rural America (2016)
Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere: Tales of Humor and Healing from Rural America is a collection of humorous and poignant stories from a veterinarian in a small, dusty farming and ranching community in rural West Texas. Dr. Brock gives you an intimate look into his small-town and big-hearted perspective on life, animals, and their owners. His unique perspective and tales of doctoring beloved pets, cantankerous livestock, and occasionally their owners will make you smile, laugh, cry, and evoke every other emotion under the sun….
3. Healing Through Humor: Fabulous Jokes From the Happy Hunters (2003)
Join the Happy Hunters in some healthy amusement!Humor strengthens the immune system, enabling the body to fight sickness and disease. Drawing from two lifetimes of joyful ministry, Charles and Frances Hunter have compiled some fabulous jokes, anecdotes, musings and mind twisters to make your heart merry and speed healing to your body and soul. Get ready to laugh! “Positive emotions invoked by humor have healing effects. If you read this book and no positive emotions come about, you need to check if you have a pulse. This book is great, and I plan to prescribe…
4. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir (2013)
When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that…
5. The Onion Book of Known Knowledge: A Definitive Encyclopaedia Of Existing Information (2013)
A devastatingly important encyclopedia from America’s Finest News Source that contains the sum total of mankind’s knowledge. Are you tired of stumbling around blindly, in an ignorant haze, perplexed by the world around you? What if there was a book that could make sense of your ultimately meaningless existence? Fortunately, The Onion, bastion of unbiased, reliable, and definitive news, has produced just such a book: an encyclopedia containing all of mankind’s known knowledge. And now, in a remarkably innovative tactic bound to send shockwaves through the entire publishing industry, THE ONION BOOK OF KNOWN KNOWLEDGE is now…
6. Bad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year (2017)
National Geographic author Michael Farquhar uncover an instance of bad luck, epic misfortune, and unadulterated mayhem tied to every day of the year. From Caligula’s blood-soaked end to hotelier Steve Wynn’s unfortunate run-in with a priceless Picasso, these 365 tales of misery include lost fortunes (like the would-be Apple investor who pulled out in 1977 and missed out on a $30 billion-dollar windfall), romance gone wrong (like the 16th-century Shah who experimented with an early form of Viagra with empire-changing results), and truly bizarre moments (like the Great Molasses Flood of 1919). Think…
7. Laugh Out Loud: 40 Women Humorists Celebrate Then and Now…Before We Forget (2018)
Remember ironing your hair? Rolling it in soda cans to straighten it? Lacquering it with enough spray that it could ward off bullets? Ever slather on cement-colored lipstick so heavy, you looked like a zombie princess? Remember hot pants and platform heels? The danger of patent-leather shoes? Were you a secretary, nurse, or teacher, but only, as our mothers urged us, until you found “Mr. Right.” In her new book, LAUGH OUT LOUD: 40 WOMEN HUMORISTS CELEBRATE THEN AND NOW…BEFORE WE FORGET, Allia Zobel Nolan and 40 funny ladies from the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop chronicle these blips in time as they look back at life in…
8. Stories I’d Tell in Bars (2017)
Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older – but arguably not wiser – Lancaster gets back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting stoned with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she’d tell if she met you in a bar… if she weren’t too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she’s you, only louder. As she details the chaos that will surely ensue if…
9. Well, Doc, It Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time!: The Unexpected Adventures of a Trauma Surgeon (2017)
In 1976, Paul Waymack began chronicling his experience as a third-year medical student, and for the next 20 years, he kept a journal filled with crazy stories of unusual patients, maladies, and international espionage. Some of them, he’s the first to admit, seem unbelievable–like chasing a naked patient around the ER parking lot in the middle of the night . . . or constructing a horse sling for a 700-pound patient . . . or treating a patient who swallowed a cigarette lighter . . . or serving as a major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Cold War, on orders of the president and with a KGB agent hot on his…
10. The Big Book of Jewish Humor (2006)
Two rival businessmen meet in the Warsaw train station. “Where are you going?” says the first man.”To Minsk,” says the second.”To Minsk, eh? What a nerve you have! I know you’re telling me you’re going to Minsk because you want me to think that you’re really going to Pinsk. But it so happens that I know you really are going to Minsk. So why are you lying to me?”Four men are walking in the desert.The German says, “I’m tired and thirsty. I must have a beer.” The Italian says, “I’m tired and thirsty. I must have wine.” The Mexican says, “I’m tired and thirsty.I must have tequila.”The Jew says, “I’m tired and thirsty. I must…
11. Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things (2017)
In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:”I’ve often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people’ also might never understand. And that’s what Furiously Happy is all about.”Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign…
12. Humor: The Lighter Path to Resilience and Health (2010)
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Laughter is the best medicine”. Readers Digest has been telling us this for years, but until recently there was no real evidence to back up the claim. This book discusses the exciting findings scientists have obtained over the past 25 years for how your sense of humor supports good physical and mental health. A separate chapter discusses humor and the brain. The first studies of humor and health demonstrated humor’s ability to strengthen the immune system, reduce pain and reduce levels of stress hormones circulating in the body. These general health-promoting benefits led researchers…
13. How I Learned I’m Old (Pretty Good, Slightly Unpleasant and Surprisin) (2019)
HOW I LEARNED I’M OLD is a collection of humorous essays embedded with a smattering of serious insights. Together, they tell the tale of about what happens when middle age mysteriously departs and old age claims its territory.For this country’s topics like ‘The New Party Game’ (counting wrinkles on other women’s faces), the insulting arrival of chin hairs and the sudden inability to monitor personal opinions in the presence of strangers have universal appeal. So do chapters about ‘Mean Girls’ in their seventies and the emotional legacy…
14. Fahrenheit 451 (2012)
Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric…
15. Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor (1991)
640 jokes, anecdotes, and limericks, complete with notes on how to tell them, from America’s leading renaissance man….
Best Humor Books: The Ultimate List
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Genesis and download some humor books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Humoral Primary Immunodeficiencies
Author(s): Mario Milco D'Elios, Marta Rizzi
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Year: 2019, Size: 7 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2310830
The Laughing Guide to a Better Life: Using Humor and Science to Improve Yourself, Your Relationships, and Your Surroundings
Author(s): Isaac Prilleltensky, Ora Prilleltensky
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Year: 2019, Size: 3 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2320040
An Introduction to the Psychology of Humor
Author(s): Janet Gibson
Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2019, Size: 10 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2335563
Humoral Wombs on the Shakespearean Stage
Author(s): Amy Kenny
Publisher: Springer International Publishing;Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2019, Size: 8 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2354536
Managing with Humor: A Novel Approach to Building Positive Employee Emotions and Psychological Resources
Author(s): Nilupama Wijewardena, Ramanie Samaratunge, Charmine Härtel
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Year: 2019, Size: 2 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2355646
Philosophy, Humor, And The Human Condition: Taking Ridicule Seriously
Author(s): Lydia Amir
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2019, Size: 4 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2461373
Take My Course, Please! The Philosophy of Humor
Author(s): Steven Gimbel
Publisher: The Teaching Company, Year: 2018-11, Size: 11 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2401235
Not Just a Laughing Matter: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Political Humor in China
Author(s): King-fai Tam, Sharon R. Wesoky (eds.)
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Year: 2018, Size: 7 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2154938
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are absolutely best-sellers according to Chicago Tribune, others are written by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.