Overheard in New York

Friedman and Malice give equal time to irreverent quips on race, sex, fashion, relationships and city life in this hilarious compilation of snippets from overheard conversations, showing how the people who live in New York give the Big Apple its irreverent charm. Presented in bare-bones dialog format, the book's hundreds of entries originally appeared on a popular and entertaining website of the same name, perhaps accounting for the book's ""blog meets book of quotations"" feel and the lack of any discernible organizational scheme; ""Dude: I definitely said, 'no abortion jokes at dinner.'"" and ""Drunk guy: That girl's tits are huge! And it's snowing!"" appear, for instance, on facing pages, but that's a small gripe for a book that packs a laugh on nearly every page. Although the book has a foreword by Marc Shaiman, the composer of Hairspray, and an introduction by bestselling author Lawrence Block (The Sins of the Fathers, The Burglar on the Prowl, All the Flowers Are Dying), it's solid enough to stand on its own. This is New York at its rawest and funniest.