BOOKS

Tripp’s most recent project as an author is Norman Lear: His Life & Times, the forthcoming and first-ever comprehensive biography of the legendary television producer and activist, to be published in the fall of 2024 by Applause Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. Tripp also teaches a course about Lear and the history of stand-up comedy, both of which he created, at his alma mater, Emerson College, in Boston.

Whetsell’s last book, The Improv: An Oral History of the Comedy Club That Revolutionized Stand-Up, written in collaboration with founder Budd Friedman with a Foreword by Jay Leno, was published in 2017 by BenBella Books with a simultaneous audio release from Tantor Media. Named one of the best comedy books of 2017 by The New York Times, ABC News and the New York Post, The Improv garnered significant additional media exposure. This included a day-of-release mention by Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and a full-length segment on CBS: This Morning; stand-alone features, excerpts and reviews in The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, the Associated Press, The New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News, Closer Weekly, Parade and the final print edition of The Village Voice; and personal appearances on Sirius XM, National Public Radio and most of the major podcasts. 

Whetsell is also the author of Father Still Knows Best: The Wit and Wisdom of America’s Favorite TV Dad’s and a celebrity joke book, both published by Kensington-Citadel Press.

Praise for The Improv

“The Improv was a cauldron of talent. Whetsell writes about it wonderfully and with respect to for its importance to comedy.”_
— Robert Klein 

“They used to say that if you made it in New York, you could make it anywhere. Maybe so, but if you didn’t make it at the Improv, it was time to pack your bags and move to ‘anywhere.’”
— Richard Lewis 

“This book is a great walk down memory lane for me. All hail the Improv and all the laughed-filled times and wonderful nights that happened in front of those brick walls.”
— Bill Maher 

“The Improv played a vital role in my early stand-up days as it did in the careers of the dazzling array of stars, eccentrics, and colorful characters whose stories adorn this bright and greatly entertaining book. Get at least two copies, in case you lose one.”
— Dick Cavett 

“Here’s a book I’ll probably never finish, because for years to come I’ll be picking it up again and again and rereading parts over and over, whenever I need perking up. It’s the history of an art form, though that sounds way too stuffy, and of an institution—the great American comedy club, especially the Improvs of New York and L.A.”

Tom Shales, Pulitzer Prize-winning former television critic of The Washington Post and #1 bestselling author of Live from New York and Those Guys Have All the Fun

“An entertaining ride through the glory years—the people, the stories, the feuds, the laughs—of the club that started the stand-up boom in America.”

Richard Zoglin, former Time magazine theater critic and author of Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Vegas Show, Hope: Entertainer of the Century and Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America

“The Godfather of the comedy club is finally called to testify … and he sings like a canary.” 

William Knoedelseder, author of I’m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High-Times in Stand-Up’s Golden Era 

From the microphone to the iconic brick wall, the Improv has been the launching pad for practically every major name in American comedy over the last five-plus decades. Now, in The Improv, Friedman, along with a Who’s Who of his most famous alumni—including Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Jimmy Fallon, Larry David, Billy Crystal, Lily Tomlin, Judd Apatow, Al Franken, Paul Reiser, Howie Mandel, Bob Saget, Drew Carey, and many more—tell it like it was in the first-ever oral history of how this game-changing comedy club came to be. 

From Ward Cleaver to Tony Soprano, Whetsell has compiled a warm, intelligent, and often hilarious treasury of paternal wisdom from more than a half-century of America’s most beloved TV fathers.