"WORST GIG is Music Appreciation 225, taught by that cool professor everyone wanted to have beers with after class. One fun nugget after another. It was harder to close than my Twitter app."—Matthew James, McSweeney's "Tawdry tales of concert catastrophes!"—Buzzfeed "Musicians' 'Worst Gig' makes for best read ever."—Salon What is the worst show you've ever played? Sometimes the worst shows inspire the best stories. After hundreds of interviews with national headliners and beloved indie acts alike, entertainment journalist Jon Niccum has crafted a collection that chronicles the most embarrassing, most hilarious and most insane live show moments ever. THE WORST GIG features outrageous stories from stars such as Wilco, Def Leppard, Tenacious D, Rush, John Mayer, and The Sex Pistols. Be it nature's wrath, equipment breakdowns or even military intervention, get the wild scoop on what really happened, straight from the artists themselves.

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 'I don't think I've ever read a book that has made me cry with laughter as much as this one. It was very difficult reading it in public as I looked like a madman' - Richard Herring James Acaster has been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award five times and has appeared on prime-time TV shows like TASKMASTER,MOCK THE WEEK, LIVE AT THE APOLLO and WOULD I LIE TO YOU? But behind the fame and critical acclaim is a man perpetually getting into trouble. Whether it's disappointing a skydiving instructor mid-flight, hiding from thugs in a bush wearing a bright red dress, or annoying the Kettering Board Games club, a didgeridoo-playing conspiracy theorist and some bemused Christians, James is always finding new ways to embarrass himself. Appearing on Josh Widdicombe's radio show to recount these stories, the feature was christened 'James Acaster's classic scrapes'. Here, in his first book, James recounts these tales (including never-before-heard stories) along with self-penned drawings, in all their glorious stupidity.

“An engaging, humorous, revealing, and refreshingly human look at the bizarre, life-threatening, and delightfully humdrum exploits of everyone from sports heroes to sex workers.” -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion, Ecstasy Club, and Media Virus This wide-ranging survey of the American economy at the turn of the millennium is stunning, surprising, and always entertaining. It gives us an unflinching view of the fabric of this country from the point of view of the people who keep it all moving. The more than 120 roughly textured monologues that make up Gig beautifully capture the voices of our fast-paced and diverse economy. The selections demonstrate how much our world has changed--and stayed the same--in the three decades prior to the turn of the millennium. If you think things have speeded up, become more complicated and more technological, you're right. But people's attitudes about their jobs, their hopes and goals and disappointments, endure. Gig's soul isn't sociological--it's emotional. The wholehearted diligence that people bring to their work is deeply, inexplicably moving. People speak in these pages of the constant and complex stresses nearly all of them confront on the job, but, nearly universally, they throw themselves without reservation into coping with them. Instead of resisting work, we seem to adapt to it. Some of us love our jobs, some of us don't, but almost all of us are not quite sure what we would do without one. With all the hallmarks of another classic on this subject, Gig is a fabulous read, filled with indelible voices from coast to coast. After hearing them, you'll never again feel quite the same about how we work.

10cc chalked up more Top 10 singles and albums in the UK than virtually any other band of their generation: their most famous creation, 'I'm Not In Love', is a pop classic that has been played more than 3 million times on American radio; their records have been covered by everyone from The Pretenders to the Fun Lovin' Criminals; and their admirers include REM. Yet 10cc's enormous contribution to pop music consistently gets overlooked.

In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.” This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Driving, wild and hilarious” (The Washington Post), here is the incredible “memoir” of the legendary actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran. When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”

When the "sharing economy" launched a decade ago, proponents claimed that it would transform the experience of work -- giving earners flexibliitiy, autonomy, and a decent income. But this novel form of work soon sprouted a dark side: exploited Uber drivers, neighborhoods ruined by Airbnb, racial discrimination, and rising carbon emissions. Several of the most prominent platforms are now faced with existential crises as they prioritize growth over fairness and long-term viability. Based on nearly a decade of pioneering research, After the Gig dives into what went wrong with this contemporary reimagining of labor. The book examines multiple types of data from thirteen cases to identify the unique features and potential of sharing platforms that prior research has failed to pinipoint