The 1970s were the era of the three-day week, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the winter of discontent, trade union Bolshevism and wildcat strikes. Through sitcoms, Raising Laughter provides a fresh look at one of our most divisive and controversial decades. Aside from providing entertainment to millions of people, the sitcom is a window into the culture of the day. Many of these sitcoms tapped into the decade's sense of cynicism, failure and alienation, providing much-needed laughter for the masses. Shows like Rising Damp and Fawlty Towers were classic encapsulations of worn-out, run-down Britain, while the likes of Dad's Army looked back sentimentally at a romanticised English past. For the first time, the stories behind the making of every sitcom from the 1970s are told by the actors, writers, directors and producers who made them all happen. This is nostalgia with a capital N, an oral history, the last word, and an affectionate salute to the kind of comedy programme that just isn't made anymore.

Why parenting is important - Pregnancy and birth - Living with a toddler - Discipline - Role of the father - Pre-school years - Helping a child to change habits - Preparing for school - Motherhood.

A tragicomic story of bad dates, bad news, bad performances, and one girl's determination to find the funny in high school from the author of Denton Little's Deathdate. Winnie Friedman has been waiting for the world to catch on to what she already knows: she's hilarious. It might be a long wait, though. After bombing a stand-up set at her own bat mitzvah, Winnie has kept her jokes to herself. Well, to herself and her dad, a former comedian and her inspiration. Then, on the second day of tenth grade, the funniest guy in school actually laughs at a comment she makes in the lunch line and asks her to join the improv troupe. Maybe he's even . . . flirting? Just when Winnie's ready to say yes to comedy again, her father reveals that he's been diagnosed with ALS. That is . . . not funny. Her dad's still making jokes, though, which feels like a good thing. And Winnie's prepared to be his straight man if that's what he wants. But is it what he needs? Caught up in a spiral of epically bad dates, bad news, and bad performances, Winnie's struggling to see the humor in it all. But finding a way to laugh is exactly what will see her through. **A Junior Library Guild Selection**

The world before September 11, 2001, was challenging enough for parents of teenagers. Now it is more so. Our families, schools, and workplaces need Emotionally Intelligent Teenagers who will not only be knowledgeable, responsible, nonviolent, and caring youths, but who also will grow up to be compassionate, committed, and courageous adults. How can parents accomplish this? Not only do raging hormones make everything more intense for teenagers, but they have their own special issues concerning identity, self-confidence, peer pressure, and responsibility, including individuating from their parents. Raising Emotionally Intelligent Teenagers shows parents how to use a balance of love, laughter, and limits to reach their goals. Drs. Elias, Tobias, and Friedlander, all respected experts in child behavior and parents of teenagers, have written a clear, informative book of sound advice that applies the insights of Daniel Goleman's best- seller, Emotional Intelligence, to unlock teenagers' untapped desire to belong to families and schools that make a difference and to contribute positively to them. Raising Emotionally Intelligent Teenagers is filled with real-life scenarios, practical strategies, and the answers to the questions parents ask most frequently, all drawn from the authors' professional and personal experiences and given with warmth and humor. Guiding the way to compassionate, committed, courageous adults is a serious challenge, but its effective pursuit is a labor of love, a journey of joy, and a path filled with pride.

Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.

Meet Randy. He was diagnosed with the rare genetic disorder tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) in 1979 at just nine months old. Written from the perspective of Randy's mother, Cynthia, it's nice to meet me too provides snapshots of what life is like raising a severely handicapped child. Randy's brought his fair share of heartbreaks but more importantly, endless laughter and joy. By putting down on paper a lifetime's worth of "Randy stories" that have been shared over with friends and family, she shows the comedic side of life with a child with special needs. - p. 4 of cover

Drawing on the authors’ diverse backgrounds and expertise, this is the first academic volume dedicated to the rarely discussed topic of laughter and humour in positive psychology.