The comic actor shares personal events that led to his understanding of love and the art of acting, discussing his relationships with such contemporaries as Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, and Gilda Radner.

By the author of Attempting Normal and host of the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, The Jerusalem Syndrome is The Gospel according to Maron: a spiritual memoir of your average hyperintelligent, ultraneurotic, superhip Jewish standup comedian and seeker. The Jerusalem Syndrome is a genuine psychological phenomenon that often strikes visitors to the Holy Land_the delusion that they are suddenly direct vessels for the voice of God. Marc Maron seems to have a distinctly American version of the Jerusalem Syndrome, which has led him on a lifelong quest for religious significance and revelation in the most unlikely of places. Maron riffs on Beat phenomena with its sacred texts, established rituals, and prescribed pilgrimages. He spends some time exploring the dark side of things, as his obsessions with cocaine (known to Maron as “magic powder”), conspiracy theories, and famous self-destructive comedians convince him that the gates of hell open beneath Los Angeles. As his quest matures, he reveals the religious aspects of Corporate America, pontificating on the timeless beauty of the Coca-Cola logo and even taking a trip to the Philip Morris cigarette factory, where the workers puff their own products with a zealot-like fervor. The culmination of Maron’s Jerusalem Syndrome comes during his own tour of the Holy Land, where, with Sony camcorder glued to his eye socket, he comes face-to-face with his own ambiguous relationship to Judaism and reaches the brink of spiritual revelation_or is it nervous breakdown? Marc Maron has considerably adapted and expanded his praised one-man show to craft a genuine literary memoir. Whether he’s a genuine prophet or a neurotic mess, he’ll make you laugh as you question the meaning of life. “Marc Maron is blazingly smart, rapid-fire, and very funny . . . A brilliant and relentless screed.” –David Rakoff, author of Fraud “Marc Maron is the first crazy person I’ve ever envied. In his brainiac-memoir-meets-hilarious-travelogue, he demonstrates the ability to tell a story with an extraordinary provocative intelligence that is regrettably shared by few.” _ Janeane Garofolo, comedian

"Shut Up, I'm Talking! chronicles the life and career of actor and comedian Jason Stuart. It's the funny, poignant story of a gay Jewish boy whose life changed after seeing Funny Girl at a second-run movie theatre in Hollywood. "I thought to myself, I'm in love with Omar Sharif - who am I left to be but Barbra Streisand! And I'm a guy... Oy!" It's about surviving a crazy family who survived the Holocaust and clearing up the wreckage of one's past while learning how to become a man. Jason has appeared in over 200 films and TV shows and has had a long and varied career, from my coming out in 1993 on the Geraldo Rivera Show to having a major supporting role in the historical drama The Birth of a Nation playing "Joseph Randall" a white, heterosexual, Christian, slave owner in 1891 while being a gay liberal Jew! As a comedian he has headlined at all the major comedy clubs, appeared twice at prestigious Just for Laughs comedy festivals and did stand-up on Broadway with Joan Rivers and Sandra Bernhard. He was featured in Comedy Central's groundbreaking special Out There, and his own stand-up comedy special Making It to the Middle. Jason has acted with George Clooney, Faye Dunaway, Angelina Jolie, Angela Lansbury, John Lithgow, Laurie Metcalf, Alexandra Paul, Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Marisa Tomei, Jon Voight, Damon Wayans and they are all in the book! His movies include Kindergarten Cop, Lost & Found, Vegas Vacation, Love Is Strange, Tangerine and on some of the most popular TV shows, Love, Sleepy Hollow, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Will & Grace, The Closer, George Lopez, House, Charmed, My Wife & Kids, The Drew Carey Show and Murder, She Wrote. Jason lives alone in Hollywood, takes care of his mom and is still looking for Mr. Right. He wrote the book with Dan Duffy, a filmmaker and author of The Half Book."--

On the surface, David Baddiel's childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family's past, his father's memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother's affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.