New Release Books by Carl Reiner

Carl Reiner's favorite movies from 1915-1950

When Carl made his first stage appearance at the age of six in "Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil" at P.S. 92 in the Bronx, his mother Bessie told him " You were the best one." "Too Busy to Die" starts with that first reminiscence, then follows Carl's earliest forays into show business, in all of which Bessie continued to tell him that "You were the best one." Carl tells of how his career might have ended with that first performance at P.S. 92, had it not been for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Carl's brother Charlie, who showed him the newspaper ad announcing that the WPA was sponsoring free acting classes for aspiring actors. Carl takes us behind the scenes when he performed in summer stock and a touring Shakespeare repertory company. His career involved working with eccentric, sometimes outlandish, always colorful people and situations, and all this, while supporting his growing family. As Carl honed his dramatic skills he discovered, oft times through desperation or necessity, that his comedic skills could save the day, by merging both at every opportunity to great success.

More than once, Carl Reiner has had friends say, "Hey, Reiner, you ought to write those things down." And at eighty, he finally has. In this funny and engaging memoir, one of the best raconteurs on the planet recalls his life in show business in short comic takes. Reiner tells of how, after answering an ad for free acting classes on his brother Charlie's advice, he forsakes a budding career as a machinist for an acting career. In "Sidney Bechet and His Jazz Band Meet Franz Kafka," he captivates the legendary jazz man and his band with an unusual reading of The Metamorphosis, during a thunderstorm at a Catskills resort in 1942. Reiner also recalls the highlights of the succeeding decades: his first sweaty audition, impersonating a dog impersonating movie stars; his forays into the theater; his work on Your Show of Shows and The Dick Van Dyke Show during TV's golden days; and his long friendship and collaboration with Mel Brooks which gave birth to the Two Thousand Year Old Man. In "A Recipe to Remember," he recites a recipe for cream cheese cookies to a star-studded audience that includes Paul Newman, Leonard Bernstein, and Barbra Streisand. In "The Gourmet Eating Club," he gives an insider's take on the now-legendary group that included Mario Puzo, Joseph Heller, Zero Mostel, and other luminaries. Mary Tyler Moore, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Johnny Carson, Cary Grant, Dinah Shore, Ann Bancroft, Jean Renoir – the list goes on and on – also appear in what Reiner calls the "literary variety show" that captures the highs and lows of his extraordinary life. Through it all, Reiner displays the wit and warmth that have made him one of the most beloved figures in the entertainment business. This charming memoir will delight anyone who wants a behind-the-scenes look at five decades of Hollywood and television history.

The heroine of our story, Cora Clark, very strongly believes that "God Bless You" is not just for sneezing, and soon convinces her classmates that "God Bless You" is also for passing wind. The next thing Cora knows, her classmate Billy's father has illustrated a character of Cora for the TV show he works on, "Dora the Explorer," and everyone watches as cartoon Cora convinces Dora that "God Bless You" is for farting, too. Suddenly, Cora is catapulted on a journey to spread the word on all the big TV talk shows, telling her story to everyone from Ellen DeGeneres to Stephen Colbert to Rachel Maddow to Whoopie Goldberg and even to the Cookie Monster. But even Cora can't believe it when she gets a letter from two sisters, inviting her to come to their house to tell the story - and Cora goes to the White House to plead her cause for Sasha, Malia, President Obama, Michelle Obama, and even their dog, Bo.

The Devil’s Legacy is about how evil finds a way into the soul of some people perpetuating generations of more evil. Adolf Meistermann’s evil burns the very life out of his employees, wife and most of his children yet he is powerless, seemingly, to stop it. Evil kills in many ways as we find out in The Devil’s Legacy. Can it, will it stop with the next generation? Peggy Cramer’s novella manuscript, The Devil’s Legacy, was picked from over 1000 participants as the winner of Carl Reiner’s Novel Beginning writing contest in a joint promotion with AuthorHouse.

Photographic journal Carl Reiner's life.

In 1960, Carl Reiner shot the pilot for a comedy series titled "Head of the Family," starring Carl Reiner. The show was about a writer who lived with his family in New Rochelle, New York and commuted to his job in Manhattan, writing on a TV comedy show. "Head of the Family" aired once and the reaction was, in Carl's words, "fair to middling." So Carl had moved on, until Sheldon Leonard came along and convinced him that he could sell it to a network, and they would not fail this time because, "we'll get a better actor to play you." And thus, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was born.Besides giving all of us out in TV land, including countless aspiring young writers, our first view of how funny stuff happens (it's created by talented writers like Rob Petrie, Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell locked in a room with a typewriter, a piano and a couch), Carl, in the year 1960, also struck a blow for feminism by making one-third of the writers' room staff female."Why and When 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' Was Born" is a recounting of behind-the-scenes stories, many of which only Carl could know, about the casting, writing and shooting of "The Dick Van Dyke Show." It includes the real life happenings in the lives of Carl and his family and friends, which inspired many of the episodes, often proving that truth is exactly as strange as fiction - like the episode where Ritchie had to wear a pith helmet to school to ward off a bullying woodpecker, a remedy suggested in real life by the Game Warden to Carl's friends, Millie and Jerry Schoenbaum, when their son Eric was under similar woodpecker attack.

The author shares ninety years of reminiscences from his private life as a son, husband and father, and from his public life as a comedian, actor, director, TV writer and author.

It's finally here - the last installment of the Carl Reiner Remember Trilogy (which is not to say he won't continue to remember). In 2012, Carl wrote his hilarious and heartwarming memoir, "I Remember Me," chronicling ninety years of living and laughing, with twelve Emmys and a Grammy to attest to his esteemed career in show business. Over the next two years, so many more stories continued to flood Carl's memory that he felt compelled to follow up with the equally rich and funny, "I Just Remembered." In this latest work, "What I Forgot To Remember," Carl has written a book that goes beyond the scope of mere life and showbiz memories. To be sure, there are, incredibly, a wealth of new memories included here: the day he and Mary Tyler Moore acted as sex coaches in the mating of their dogs; sharing stories with Milton Berle about each of their unique encounters with silent film star Pola Negri; his quest to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records along with his old friend Betty White; and more with a broad spectrum of celebrities spanning decades such as Pete Seeger, Tyrone Power, Eva Marie Saint and Conan O'Brien, to name just a few.The bonus in "What I Forgot To Remember" is the inclusion of never before documented "historical" events and characters, filtered through (or possibly created by, who can know?) the brain cells of Carl Reiner; for instance, the history of the straight pin, "Literature's Most Ignored And Important Commodity." Or Carl's world-altering invention of the highly-acclaimed "Improvenator." Or the touching story of his mother's life. And for good measure, writer's advice from a skilled wordsmith in "Chews Yore Homonyms Well, As Awl Grate Righters Dew."So enjoy. Whether it happened in actuality or in the fertile mind of Carl Reiner, you will be equally entertained.

Carl Reiner continues to remember his extraordinary life and career in the second volume of his memoirs.

Everyone loves scary stories and award-winning comedy writer/director Carl Reiner invites readers to huddle close as he tells a young boy's tale of the mysterious house next door. Something with red beams of light shooting from its eyes was coming down the basement stairs. It came closer and closer... the hair on the back of my neck was sticking straight out. I finally saw it- and it was alive! As the story becomes spookier and spookier, Reiner pauses to ask "Shall we turn the page- or is it too scary?" That's for you to decide! Parents and children can read along together as they listen to spooky sound effects and Carl Reiner's hilarious performance of Tell Me a Scary Story... on the accompanying CD.

The hero of Carl Reiner's nutty and wonderful novel, Nat Noland, is hard at work on his fifth book, his own version of Genesis, concentrating on the relationship between Cain and Abel. While investigating their relationship, he starts to investigate his relationship with himself. His doting wife, Glennie, gets worried when she hears him having a loud, heated discussion while he's alone in the basement. Because he is unaware that he is talking to himself -- in two distinct voices -- she encourages him to seek the help of the famous Viennese psychiatrist Dr. Frucht. After a few sessions, Dr. Frucht elicits descriptions of Nat's recurring childhood dreams and the fact that he never knew his biological parents. In the lobby, when Nat bumps into the lovely Dr. Gertrude Trampleasure, an empathologist, she tells him how much he resembles her old teenage sweetheart, Buddy Keebler: "You two could be twins!" With the assistance of a private eye, Nat embarks on a quest to search for this "twin" and his unknown past, while continuing to work on his biblical novel, NNNNN.

A two-thousand-year-old man visits an elementary school and answers questions from a teacher and students, in a picture-book variation of the authors' classic skit, and includes a CD with the comedians performing their text.

The comedians' impromptu comedy routine regarding a two-thousand-year-old man and the dilemmas he faces shares humorous views on religion, taxes, fad diets, and other topics

A Jewish clerk from the Bronx joins a Shakespeare theater company down South, entertains the troops during World War II, and reaches the brink of comic stardom

In an eccentric tale of unconventional love, Fred and Sharon Cox are each separately having an affair with their alluring Japanese tutor, Hana Yoshi, while their son is plotting to run away with one of the twin Salvadorian housekeepers.

A boy asks his grandfather to tell him a silly story before bedtime and his grandfather tells him one about the Sillie family and their neighbors, the Cutters, another about Misha Stish, and a third about Colonel Newt de Grute.

In his semi-autobiographical, laugh-out-loud novel, Carl Reiner details a young man's frustrations as he works as a machinist's helper and tries to break into show business. Along the bumpy path, the aspiring young actor tries to extricate himself from his overly protective parents--and his two girlfriends--and eventually lands an acting gig with a small theater troupe.

After receiving an e-mail from God, successful romance novelist Nat Noland just can't seem to get anywhere with his new novel, in this humorous story by a comedy legend.

A little boy goes to his neighbor Mr. Neewollah's house to pick up his scary Halloween costume, but what he finds there is more frightening than he had imagined.

A sweet, wry, and whimsical collection of short stories from one of America's truly great comedic minds. Carl Reiner will have you laughing out loud at these twenty-five nostalgic tales with an off-beat flair, as he tackles such wide-rangeing topics as: Phone Sex: Dial 411 for Legal Smut Evangelism: Sissy Sue and the Reverend Reverend Love at first sight: Warren Waits and the Spaghetti-Strap Girl God: The Almighty