How To Talk Dirty and Influence People : An Autobiography by Lenny Bruce, Leonard Alfred Schneider - 1967

Chicago: Playboy Press, and New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1967. Mass Market Paperback. Near Fine. A very lightly used book. Interior lightly tanned, otherwise pristine. Spine straight, tight and uncreased. A single, slight, one-inch reading crease in center of front cover is the only indication the book has ever been opened. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. xiv + 240 pages. Twenty-four pages of B&W photographs. Illustrated card wraps.

Lenny Bruce, first of the shock jock stand-up comedians was renowned for his open, freestyle and critical form of comedy which contained satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction for obscenity is seen as a landmark for freedom of speech in the United States. The epigraph to this autobiography is typical of his comedy: "I dedicate this book to all the followers of Christ and his teachings; in particular to a true Christian--Jimmy Hoffa--because he hired ex-convicts as, I assume, Christ would have." And a prediction from page 164: "Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will some day become Congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves."