Dave Barry in Cyberspace

A self-professed computer geek who actually does Windows 95, bestselling humorist Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious hard drive via the information superhighway--and into the very heart of cyberspace, asking the provocative question: If God had wanted us to be concise, why give us so many fonts?

Inside you'll find juicy bytes on

How to Buy and Set Up a Computer; Step One: Get Valium Nerdstock in the Desert; Or: Bill Gates Is Elvis Software: Making Your Computer Come Alive So It Can Attack You Word Processing: How to Press an Enormous Number of Keys Without Ever Actually Writing Anything Selected Web Sites, including Cursing in Swedish, Deformed Frog Pictures, and The Toilets of Melbourne, Australia And much, much more!

"VERY FUNNY . . . After a day spent staring at a computer monitor, think of the book as a kind of screen saver for your brain."
--New York Times Book Review

"RELENTLESSLY FUNNY . . . BARRY SHINES."
—People

A self-professed computer geek who actually does Windows 95, bestselling humorist Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious hard drive via the information superhighway—and into the very heart of cyberspace, asking the provocative question: If God had wanted us to be concise, why give us so many fonts?

Inside you'll find juicy bytes on

How to Buy and Set Up a Computer; Step One: Get Valium Nerdstock in the Desert; Or: Bill Gates Is Elvis Software: Making Your Computer Come Alive So It Can Attack You Word Processing: How to Press an Enormous Number of Keys Without Ever Actually Writing Anything Selected Web Sites, including Cursing in Swedish, Deformed Frog Pictures, and The Toilets of Melbourne, Australia And much, much more!

"VERY FUNNY . . . After a day spent staring at a computer monitor, think of the book as a kind of screen saver for your brain."
—New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

Whether you're a computer whiz or a computer nerd, this tongue-in-cheek guide to computing by bestselling humorist Barry (Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys, etc.) has enough byte to keep you entertained. Designed to look like a user's manual, complete with section tabs and a mock glossary, it offers a wryly skeptical tour of the digital world with outrageously irreverent commentary on word-processing applications, software installation and use, Windows 95, Comdex trade shows, technical support services and much more. Computerphobes will instantly relate to Barry's spoof, which taps into the residual anxieties lurking even in computer sophisticates. (How to buy and set up a computer? "Step One: Get Valium.") Along with a brief history of computing from cave walls to virtual reality, Barry chats on the Internet, eavesdrops on a cybersex session and visits selected weird World Wide Web sites ("Proof that civilization is doomed.") Barry's nonstop humor is, perhaps necessarily, hit and miss, but he never loses sight of his big target and lets loose with enough volleys to remind us that, despite all the hype, a computer is just a machine "that operates on simple principles that can be easily understood by anybody with some common sense, a little imagination, and an IQ of 750." Major ad/promo. Author tour. (Oct.)

A syndicated newspaper columnist whose laugh-out-loud humor has also resulted in several books, Dave Barry is an equal opportunity mocker. On subjects ranging from politics to Japan to parenting, he expertly highlights the irony and absurdity in everyday life.