Simon & Schuster announced today that it will publish What This Comedian Said Will Shock You by Bill Maher, host of the hit HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher. A brilliantly astute and acerbically funny vivisection of American life, politics, and culture, it is Maher’s first book in more than a decade and will publish globally on June 4, 2024.
At the end of each episode of Real Time, Maher delivers a direct-to-camera sermon—what he calls his “editorial”—that somehow manages to be laugh-out-loud funny and also make a point no one else is saying. The cathartic nature of these commentaries is a big reason Real Time is one of the last “appointment viewing” shows on television.
To put this book together, Maher reviewed more than a decade of his editorials, rewriting, reimagining, and updating them, and adding new material to speak exactly to the moment we’re in. Free speech, cops, drugs, race, religion, the generations, cancel culture, the parties, the media, show biz, romance, health—Maher covers all of it without pulling punches to please either side of the aisle. The result is a hugely entertaining work of commentary in the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and H.L. Mencken. As Maher says, “We’re not investigative journalists—we don’t break stories, we break new ways of looking at stories.”
“Bill Maher has written one of the funniest, sharpest and most perceptive works of cultural commentary about life in America that I’ve read in a long time” said Jonathan Karp, President and CEO of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and publisher of Simon & Schuster, who acquired the book. “As the 2024 election approaches, this book will offer readers hilarity, sanity and the perspective we need.”
For more information: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/What-This-Comedian-Said-Will-Shock-You/Bill-Maher/9781668051351
