Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The first all-new publication from The Onion's stable of mad satirists since 1999's Our Dumb Century, this globe-spanning volume raises the bar for topical humor. Known for their savage, irreverent newspaper parody, The Onion staff delight in playing up stereotypes and skewering perceptions, and they have picked an enormous playground in which to do so; this skewed world atlas compiles enough fictional facts to tickle-and probably offend-just about everyone. Profiling every country in the world-from the United States ("The Land of Opportunism") to Greenland ("The Largest Land Mass on Earth") to "The Who Cares Islands"-this handsome parody is visually indistinguishable from genuine reference materials, but with jokes crammed into every inch, from topographical maps ("Largest Mayan casino in Mexico") and tiny vital statistics boxes (Syria's ethnicity: "Anti-Semitic Semites") to historic timelines (Ireland, 1387: "Luck of the Irish runs out") and photo captions ("Emergency shipments of food, water, and Bono reach Sudan"). The group's humor can demand a rarified kind of knowledge-as in the entry for Nicaragua, which revolves entirely around the now-ancient Nintendo game "Contra"-ensuring that some jokes will fall flat; for anyone with a cultural pulse, however, the hit-to-miss ratio will be high. Eminently browsable and compulsively re-readable, this is an essential book for fans of Stewart, Colbert and (of course) The Onion.
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Review
"... our good news is that Alan A. Stone is here now and a discovery to rejoice at, a welcome addition to the sparse regiment of worthwhile film writers."
— David Thomson, latimes.com

"A brilliantly astute physician, teacher, and essayist, Alan Stone helps us understand how movies address our moral and spiritual yearnings, concerns, and worries, and in so doing, he helps us understand who we are and what we hope to accomplish in life. His dedicated movie-going wisdom becomes ours to consider as we go through life's moral challenges."
—Robert Coles

"A splendid collection of essays that illuminate a wide range of memorable films and offer compelling insights into the significance and potential of cinema."
—Sissela Bok

"This brilliant book is like that ideal conversation after a movie. Few critics have Alan Stone's moral, psychological, and spiritual subtlety, or even his patience and scope. With his psychologist's eye for complex elemental human relationships, Stone is an inspired guide through the American and foreign film world. I wanted to watch, or watch again, every movie in this book."