Dear friends: There's light at the end of the tunnel...and it's coming from an approaching train.
For a handful of fortunate people, every day is a new and life-affirming chance to make the world a better place. And then there are the rest of us, who know that life isn’t one damn thing after another, it’s the same damn thing again and again. Let's face it, sometimes life just sucks. And for folks like us who accept that fact and understand that misery occasionally loves company there is PESSIMISMS (Client Distribution Services; April 15, 2003; $5.99) by the best-selling author, Eric Marcus.

Published just in time for Tax Day (and every other day of the year for that matter), PESSIMISMS is a thoroughly entertaining volume chock-full of insights from famous pessimists and everyday naysayers who argue that life is anything BUT a bowl of cherries.

Ever run across a relentlessly chipper, "glass-half-full" person and want nothing more than to grab them by the throat, shake them and shout "GET REAL!?" Well Eric Marcus hears you loud and clear, which is how PESSIMISMS came to be. In this indispensable compendium, Marcus offers a healthy dose of cynicism from the likes of Woody Allen, Fran Lebowitz, Albert Einstein, Lily Tomlin, Mark Twain, Malcolm Forbes and his late Grandma Ethel (“I’ll never live to see you married”— and she was right!) to name a few. Marcus proves that not only is the glass, indeed, half-empty, he suspects that what’s in it tastes terrible, too. “If you’re looking for a good laugh about the way things really are,” Marcus writes, “you’ve come to the right place.”



In PESSIMISMS, these part- and full-time pessimists dispense their irreverent thoughts
about relationships, families, religion, politics, health, aging, money, the economy,
and the human condition.

On Family:
“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”
– George Burns

On Marriage:
“Trust your husband, adore your husband, and get as much as you can in your own name.”
–Advice to Joan Rivers from her mother

On Money:
“I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.”
– Jackie Mason

On Health:
“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like,
and do what you’d rather not.”
– Mark Twain