Tony Hendra Books In Order

Novels

  1. The Messiah of Morris Avenue (2006)

Non fiction

  1. The 80’s (1979)
  2. Not the Bible (1983)
  3. Going Too Far (1987)
  4. The 90’s (1989)
  5. Born to Run Things (1992)
  6. Brad ’61 (1993)
  7. The Book of Bad Virtues (1994)
  8. The Gigawit Dictionary of the English Language (2000)
  9. Father Joe (2004)
  10. A Deep and Subtle Joy (2006)
  11. Last Words (2009)

Novels Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Tony Hendra Books Overview

The Messiah of Morris Avenue

Tony Hendra’s Father Joe became a new classic of faith and spirituality even for those not usually so inclined. Now he’s back with a novel set in a very reverent future where Church and State always walk hand in hand. Fade in as Johnny Greco a fallen journalist, who nurses a few grudges along with his cocktails, stumbles onto a story that intrigues him. It seems a young man named Jay is driving about New Jersey in a beat up van preaching radical notions like kindness and generosity and even tossing off a few miracles. How better, Johnny schemes, to stick it to Reverend Sabbath America’s 1 Holy Warrior than to write a headline making story announcing Jay as the Second Coming? Then something strange happens. Died in the wool skeptic Johnny actually finds his own life being transformed by the new messiah. Hilarious and genuinely moving, The Messiah of Morris Avenue brings to life a savior who reminds the world of what Jesus actually taught and wittingly skewers all sorts of sanctimoniousness on both sides of the political spectrum. Writing with heart, a sharp eye, and a passionate frustration with those who feel they hold a monopoly on God, Tony Hendra has created a delightful story that reminds us of the unfailing power of genuine faith.

Born to Run Things

Hendra, a past editor of National Lampoon, offers an outrageous, hilarious parody of George Bush, ‘a James Bond in sheep’s clothing.’ Sample chapters include ‘Heavens, Kuwait!’ and ‘Where There’s a Willie, There’s a Way.’ Illustrated throughout with newsphotos and smart alecky captions.

Brad ’61

In a story told with the help of Pop images, a young man named Brad faces obstacles as he searches for happiness he wants to fall in love, live in New York, and be an artist.

The Book of Bad Virtues

A hilarious parody of the wisdom of the ages presents a primer on being bad that offers poems, proverbs, classic tales, and irresponsible stories encouraging such behaviors as heedless hypocrisy, blatant laziness, unbridled lust, and flagrant disloyalty.

The Gigawit Dictionary of the English Language

Welcome to the first satirical book about the Internet! Every day, another cyber visionary adds another sparkling spire to the fabulous Wired City of the Future: rooms that think, PCs that feel your pain, micro electrical devices that warn you when youre about to be mugged An e topia set in a sea of genetically modified money that grows ALL BY ITSELF without boring old profits or products! The analog world and its bricks and mortar dinosaurs have been swept away by a Silicon Tsunami! The Wired have crushed the Tired! And with them they have brought an outlandish tribal language only THEY can understand! Do you REALLY know what URL and XML mean? Or the origin of sinister terms like drop and drag end user fat media and worst of all, up time? Have you any idea why something is through put instead of put through? Of course you dont!!! At best, YOURE FAKING IT! You need to know the REAL MEANING of terms that RIGHT NOW are making thousands of people with bad skin and all black wardrobes into billionaires. You need The GIGAWIT Dictionary of the E nglish Language. YOU may be a GIGAWIT! Find out by submitting your own E nglish terms and definitions to us. If in the arbitrary and capricious judgment of the editors, its funny enough, boom! youre in the next edition of the GIGAWIT Dictionary, Youll be a published author AND youll get paid!

Father Joe

A key comic writer of the past three decades has created his most heartfelt and hard hitting book. Father Joe is Tony Hendra’s inspiring true story of finding faith, friendship, and family through the decades long influence of a surpassingly wise Benedictine monk named Father Joseph Warrillow. Like everything human, it started with sex. In 1955, fourteen year old Tony found himself entangled with a married Catholic woman. In Cold War England, where Catholicism was the subject of news stories and Graham Greene bestsellers, Tony was whisked off by the woman s husband to see a priest and be saved. Yet what he found was a far cry from the priests he d known at Catholic school, where boys were beaten with belts or set upon by dogs. Instead, he met Father Joe, a gentle, stammering, ungainly Benedictine who never used the words wrong or guilt, who believed that God was in everyone and that the only sin was selfishness. During the next forty years, as his life and career drastically ebbed and flowed, Tony discovered that his visits to Father Joe remained the one constant in his life the relationship that, in the most serious sense, saved it. From the fifties and his adolescent desire to join an abbey himself; to the sixties, when attending Cambridge and seeing the satire of Beyond the Fringe convinced him to change the world with laughter, not prayer; to the seventies and successful stints as an original editor of National Lampoon and a writer of Lemmings, the off Broadway smash that introduced John Belushi and Chevy Chase; to professional disaster after co creating the legendary English series Spitting Image; from drinking to drugs, from a failed first marriage to a successful second and the miracle of parenthood the years only deepened Tony s need for the wisdom of his other and more real father, creating a bond that could not be broken, even by death.A startling departure for this acclaimed satirist, Father Joe is a sincere account of how Tony Hendra learned to love. It s the story of a whole generation looking for a way back from mockery and irony, looking for its own Father Joe, and a testament to one of the most charismatic mentors in modern literature. From the Hardcover edition.

A Deep and Subtle Joy

Quarr Abbey is a historic and beautiful Benedictine Monastery founded on the Isle of Wight in 1132. Along the way it was home to Father Joe, celebrated in Tony Hendra’s New York Times bestselling book. In A Deep and Subtitle Joy, Fr. Luke Bell takes the reader on a fascinating 24 hour personal tour of Quarr Abbey, and provides a perfect introduction to Benedictine and to Christian spirituality The author brings you, chapter by chapter, to the place in the monastery where the monks spend their lives and provides a vivid insight into the rhythm of their day. While en route he talks about some of the personal experiences that brought him to the abbey and explains what this place and life in the monastery means to the monks who live here. Drawing equally upon nature and scripture, Fr. Luke explains the practice and the purpose of the different aspects of monastic life. Each chapter presents a spiritual theme by means of reflection on a particular aspect of the husbandry or buildings of the monastery, finding profound answers to such seemingly mundane questions as, What can we learn from the way pigs eat? or Why is the cloister hidden?

Last Words

As one of America’s preeminent comedic voices, George Carlin saw it all throughout his extraordinary fifty year career and made fun of most of it. Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acer bic humor with never before told stories from his own life. In 1993 George Carlin asked his friend and bestselling author Tony Hendra to help him write his autobiography. For almost fifteen years, in scores of conversations, many of them recorded, the two discussed Carlin’s life, times, and evolution as a major artist. When Carlin died at age seventy one in June 2008 with the book still unpublished, Hendra set out to assemble it as his friend would have wanted. Last Words is the result, the rollicking, wrenching story of Carlin’s life from birth literally to his final years, as well as a parting gift of laughter to the world of comedy he helped create. George Carlin’s journey to stardom began in the rough and tumble neighborhood of New York’s Upper West Side in the 1940s, where class and culture wars planted the seeds for some of his best known material, including the notorious ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.’ His early conflicts, his long struggle with substance abuse, his turbulent relationships with his family, and his triumphs over catastrophic setbacks all fueled the unique comedic worldview he brought to the stage. From the heights of stardom to the low points few knew about, Last Words is told with the same razor sharp honesty that made Carlin one of the best loved comedians in American history.

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