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Celebrated journalist Mark Haskell Smith meets, and indeed joins, those shucking off social conventions by shucking off their clothes - he hikes bareback in the Alps with a naked rambler's society, he buys baguettes in the buff in a French resort and he meets the marginally dressed mayor of a Spanish clothes-optional municipality. But this is not just a book of naked adventures and sun-ripened genitals. It is a study of 20th-century Western cultural and social mores; a record of radical history and politics practised by those made radical by their refusal to get dressed; a heartfelt celebration of the simple joys of being alive; and a full-blooded war cry for reclaiming pride in our bodies and rejecting those who would make us ashamed.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49544287322385,"sku":"GOR006668974","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49548002361617,"sku":"GOR007832860","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49755577057553,"sku":"CIN1782397159G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50405982109969,"sku":"CIN1782397159VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52449316995345,"sku":"GOR008575831","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1782397159.jpg?v=1751424388"},{"product_id":"salty-book-mark-haskell-smith-9780802170347","title":"Salty","description":"Turk Henry is overweight, unemployed, and unafraid to have a cold beer for breakfast. 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This uproarious and delectably dark comic thriller shows a side of paradise that definitely hasn't been endorsed by the tourist bureau.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49616018080017,"sku":"GOR003971643","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51197496328465,"sku":"GOR010203256","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1843545403.jpg?v=1751445817"},{"product_id":"baked-book-mark-haskell-smith-9780802170767","title":"Baked","description":"Miro Basinas is an experimental botanist who sells his rarefied product to a discerning clientele. Only Miro's not growing heirloom tomatoes or making organic wine--he's growing weed. 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It wasn't anything like typical stoner weed, in fact it didn't get you stoned. This cannabis possessed an ephemeral quality known to aficionados as dankness. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eArmed with a State of California Medical Marijuana recommendation, he begins a journey into the international underground where super-high-grade marijuana is developed and tracks down the rag-tag community of underground botanists, outlaw farmers, and renegade strain hunters who pursue excellence and diversity in marijuana, defying the law to find new flavors, tastes, and effects. 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Wickedly funny, ribald, and sharp-eyed, BLOWN starts as a simple case of embezzlement and explodes into a fatal high-stakes gamble for money and the pursuit of happiness.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361418350865,"sku":"CIN0802128149G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50520391287057,"sku":"GOR012070250","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52345149030673,"sku":"NLS9780802128140","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740112253201,"sku":"NIN9780802128140","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0802128149.jpg?v=1751043299"},{"product_id":"moist-book-mark-haskell-smith-9780802143358","title":"Moist","description":"\u003cb\u003eDark and mordantly funny . . . a real machine-gun narrative--the man can tell a story, oh, yes, indeed. --T. 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It was from this wine-sodden revel that comedy was born-- a complicated and messy origin that grows only more relevant in light of our democracy's current struggles. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Twice a year, thousands of Athenians would attend festivals that turned comedic writing into a fierce battle for fame, money, and laughably large trophies. While the tragedies earned artistic respect, it was the comedies--the raunchy jokes, vulgar innuendo, outrageous invention, and barbed political commentary--that captured the imagination of the city. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The comedic writers feuded openly, insulting one another within their plays, each production more inventive and outlandish than the last, as they tried to top the other and win first prize. Of these writers, only the work of Aristophanes has survived. It's through his plays that we know about the other playwrights who were his competition: Cratinus, the great lush; Eupolis, the copycat; and Ariphrades, the sexual deviant. These insults were no laughing matter as being on the sharp end of one of Aristophanes' jokes could destroy a reputation. It might have been the golden age of Democracy, but for comic playwrights, it was the age of Rude Talk. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Through conversations with historians, politicians, and other writers, the always witty and effusive Smith embarks on a personal mission (bordering on obsession) exploring the life of one of these unknown writers, and how comedy challenged the patriarchy, the military, and the powers that be, both then and now. A comic writer himself and author of many books and screenplays, Smith also looks back at his own career, his love for the uniquely dynamic city of Athens, and what it means for a writer to leave a legacy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50397242425617,"sku":"CIN1951213343G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50807043850513,"sku":"GOR014079227","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51068316811537,"sku":"NIN9781951213343","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53069585219857,"sku":"NLS9781951213343","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1951213343.jpg?v=1751430537"},{"product_id":"naked-at-lunch-book-mark-haskell-smith-9780802123510","title":"Naked at Lunch","description":"People have been getting naked in public for reasons other than sex for centuries. But as novelist and narrative journalist Mark Haskell Smith shows in \u003ci\u003eNaked at Lunch\u003c\/i\u003e, being a nudist is more complicated than simply dropping trou. Nonsexual social nudism, as it's called, rose to prominence in the late nineteenth century. Intellectuals, outcasts, and health nuts from Victorian England and colonial India to Belle Epoque France and Gilded Age Manhattan disrobed and wrote manifestos about the joys of going clothing-free. From stories of ancient Greek athletes slathered in olive oil to the millions of Germans who fled the cities for a naked frolic during the Weimar Republic to American soldiers given naturist magazines by the Pentagon in the interest of preventing sexually transmitted diseases, Haskell Smith uncovers nudism's amusing and provocative past. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eNaked at Lunch\u003c\/i\u003e is equal parts cultural history and gonzo participatory journalism. Coated in multiple layers of high SPF sunblock, Haskell Smith dives into the nudist world today. He publicly disrobes for the first time in Palm Springs, observes the culture of family nudism in a clothing-free Spanish town, and travels to the largest nudist resort in the world, a hedonist's paradise in the south of France. He reports on San Francisco's controversial ban on public nudity, participates in a week of naked hiking in the Austrian Alps, and caps off his adventures with a week on the Big Nude Boat, a Caribbean cruise full of nudists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51883019239697,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51883019305233,"sku":"CIN0802123511VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780802123510.jpg?v=1754507040"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-mark-haskell-smith.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}