Spy: The Funny Years [Hardcover]

Kurt Andersen (Author)

List Price:	CDN$ 51.99
Price:	CDN$ 32.75 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 19.24 (37%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Temporarily out of stock.
Order now and we'll deliver when available. We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information. Your account will only be charged when we ship the item.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

Product Details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Hyperion - Miramax; 1 edition (Oct 25 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1401352391
ISBN-13: 978-1401352394
Product Dimensions: 25.8 x 25.6 x 2.8 cm
Shipping Weight: 1.6 Kg
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #118,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Books > Reference > Writing > Newspapers & Magazines

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

With equal parts nostalgia and snarkiness, this history /anthology celebrates the now legendary satirical magazine during its heyday—aka 1986 to 1991, when founders and partners Andersen (Turn of the Century and host of [PRI's] Studio 360) and Carter (editor of Vanity Fair) ran the show (the magazine folded as a monthly in 1994). "We were very lucky to catch two waves—the post-'60s ironic mood and the go-go financial mood," observes Andersen, and these pages offer plenty of opportunity to travel back to those heady days of "Separated at Birth?" and "The Spy Guide to Postmodern Everything." Those who wondered what life at Spy was really like will also be rewarded: former deputy editor Kalogerakis [...] has collected plenty of stories about minuscule paychecks, ridiculously tight budgets and bacchanalian parties (Andersen and Carter chime in with extensive annotations). Certain to be on the holiday wish lists of aging hipsters. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

Just in time for the 20th anniversary of Spys creation comes the definitive anthology, inside story, and scrapbook. Spy: The Funny Years will remind the magazines million readers why they loved and depended on Spy, and bring to a new generation the jewels of its reporting and writing, photography, illustration, design, and world-class mischief-making. It will demonstrate Spys singular niche in American magazine and cultural history. But mainly it is intended to be enjoyed on its own: one beautiful, comprehensive volume containing Spys funniest and most creative work, along with the ultimate insiders account of how it all came to be. All the best of it is here: Separated at Birth?, Naked City, The Fine Print, Log-Rolling in Our Time, the Blurb-o-Mat, those hilarious (and now ubiquitous) charts, the inside stories on the New York Times and Hollywood by J.J. Hunsecker and Celia Brady, the covers, investigative features, and the hilarious stories on pretty much everyone who was anyone during the late 80s and early 90s. Not to mention the often grisly but always entertaining regular cast of characters from Spys pagesthe churlish dwarf billionaires, beaver-faced moguls, bull-whip-wielding uber-agents, knobby-kneed socialites and, of course, short-fingered vulgarians. During its heyday, from 1986 through 1993, Spy broke important ground in journalism and design, defining smartness for its generation. It was a once-in-a-lifetime creation that shaped the zeitgeist and succeeded (for a while) against all odds. Spy: The Funny Years will be the fun, stylish, hilarious holiday gift of the year.

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon Canada

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Share your experience with this product with others

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com ^(beta)

Amazon.com: 4.1 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as funny as I expected or hoped, Nov 26 2006

By Bill Herring "Babaluba" - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Spy: The Funny Years (Hardcover)

While it's (marginally) interesting to me to learn about the backstage goings-on that went into creating this magazine that I used to love, what I really wanted was lots of reprints of articles that defined Spy. While a few of them are reprinted here (such as the wonderful piece on "yuppie porn") others are inexplicably printed in extremely small type ("A Spy Guide to Postmodern Everything") that literally require a magnifying glass to read! What a disappointment. I gave it an extra star because it's bound very nicely and obviously took a lot of effort to put together.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Please follow up with a "Best of Spy" book!, Feb 7 2007

By Jeannette Belliveau "Author, "An Amateur'... - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Spy: The Funny Years (Hardcover)

How glorious to revisit the magnificent "Checks to Cheapskates" caper! Whereby Spy sent checks for 13 cents to Adnan Koshoggi and Donald Trump, who cashed them. (Cher, Bill Blass, Faye Dunaway, Rupert Murdoch, Mort Zuckerman and others cashed $1.11 checks.)

Most huge fans of Spy will want more reprints of classic articles (and in bigger, more readable type) than appear here. Still, it's wonderful to revisit the definitive article, "It's Yuppie Porn, and we can't help ourselves," as well as pieces on washed-up celebrities after-hours wanderings through the Big Apple, "Separated at Birth," "Logrolling in our Time," "Blurb-o-Matic" and "Celebrity Math."

We also have oddball gems such as "Meet the Nobelists: This month's question: What's the best way to eat an Oreo cookie?"

"Spy: The Funny Years" is a 50-50 split between being a narrative about the founding and history of the 1980s' funniest magazine and excerpts from the more infamous articles.

This book will leave you wanting to rush to eBay for some back issues, or wanting to beg Miramax, the publisher of "The Funny Years," to also bring out a "Best of Spy" compilation of the original articles.

I found myself enjoying the narrative of how Spy came to be, a narrative which may create envy in many a journalist in the stuffy mainstream media, reading about the vastly underpaid minions working at Spy to create its hilarious, information-rich visuals that presaged the Web. Spy also presaged "South Park's" evisceration of pompous celebrities (and Saturday Night Live's "Hollywood Minute").

Spy's founders managed to create articles that were hilarious, visually inspired, tough yet accurate, requiring top-notch lawyering. Will we ever see something comparable for our era?

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SPY: Finally, a Fitting Farewell, Oct 29 2006

By William D. Geerhart - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Spy: The Funny Years (Hardcover)

"SPY: The Funny Years" is the next best thing to an announcement that the magazine is resuming publication. This book is more than just a "greatest hits" collection. Indeed, it discusses in detail how the remarkably vicious and intelligent publication came to be. Reading the book, one gets nostalgic and then angry that it didn't survive to chronicle the W years. Just imagine what SPY could have done to the likes of Ann Coulter.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 12 reviews 4.1 out of 5 stars