How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiography

During the course of a career that began in the late 1940s, Lenny Bruce challenged the sanctity of organized religion and other societal and political conventions; he widened the boundaries of free speech. Critic Ralph Gleason said, “So many taboos have been lifted and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy.”

Although Bruce died when he was only forty, his influence on the worlds of comedy, jazz, and satire are incalculable. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People remains a brilliant existential account of his life and the forces that made him the most important and controversial entertainer in history.

• Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences
• Last Words
• The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of An American Icon
• I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era
• The Comic Offense from Vaudeville to Contemporary Comedy
• Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
• The Berkeley Concert
• Ladies and gentlemen - Lenny Bruce!!
• The Almost Unpublished Lenny Bruce: From the Private Collection of Kitty Bruce
• Love All the People: The Essential Bill Hicks