The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad Audiobook

Quotes

• “Expanded from his one-man show of the same name (and including poetry by his wife), comedian Birbiglia’s rueful, hilarious take on new parenthood is a treat.”

  — People

• “Fusing good humor and raw honesty with selections from Stein’s evocative poetry, Birbiglia narrates his journey into parenting…Hilarious, relatable, cringeworthy, and effortlessly entertaining.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• “I cannot express how much this book affected me and how many times it made me cry.”

  — John Mulaney, comedian

• Expanded from his one-man show of the same name (and including poetry by his wife), comedian Birbiglia's rueful, hilarious take on new parenthood is a treat.

  — People

• Mike Birbiglia and Jen Stein are the best collaborators since Emily Dickinson teamed up with her long-winded comedian friend. I'm joking because I cannot express how much this book affected me and how many times it made me cry.

  — John Mulaney, comedian

• Mike Birbiglia & J. Hope Stein have written the seminal parenting tome--side-splittingly funny from the first word to the last delicious bite. It's a page-turner, wise and wise-assed, the comic hit of the year. Whether you've been a parent or ever had one: you'll love this knockout!

  — Mary Karr, authorof The Liars' Club, Cherry, and Lit

• Life is not the same after having children. It's delusional to pretend otherwise. But Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein have not only survived, they're making their most hilarious and truthful art yet. This book might save your best friend's life.

  — Lin-Manuel Miranda, PulitzerPrize Winning writer of Hamilton

• This is a brilliant, funny, big-hearted version of he-said, she-said. Birbiglia and Stein trade jokes and poems and splendid storytelling about their roundabout stumble into parenthood. It's hilarious, humane, often beautiful, and absolutely captivating.

  — Susan Orlean, staff writer at The New Yorker and New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book

• The genius of this book is that Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein have invented a totally new form. He tells incredibly funny stories. She gives a gorgeous, epic view of the same events, in poetry (she's a published poet who's been in The New Yorker). It's about what they went through together, not wanting to have kids, and then having kids, through these two very different lenses. Their diabolical writing trick: sometimes she delivers the laughs and he delivers the feelings.

  — Ira Glass, host of Public Radio's This American Life

• Fusing good humor and raw honesty with selections from Stein's evocative poetry, Birbiglia narrates his journey into parenting...Hilarious, relatable, cringeworthy, and effortlessly entertaining.

  — Kirkus (starred review)

• I wish I had read The New One before having a kid. Mike confronts parenthood with the kind of devastating honesty that can't help but be funny, and Jen's poems capture what prose can't. In a better world, this book would be sold with every pregnancy test in America.

  — Bess Kalb, author of Nobody WillTell You This But Me

• If The New One on Broadway is a raucous, tumbling tour through the many roomed house that is Mike and Jen's journey into parenthood, then this book is a long, cozy weekend inside the home. Mike makes you coffee and settles in to tell his story at a wonderfully readable pace, bringing detail and nuance impossible to contain in the stage show. Jen's poetry is the big stunner, an outrageous treasure casually presented, emeralds strewn amongst crumbs across the kitchen table, a string of pearls hanging on a doorknob.

  — Jacqueline Novak, author of How to Weep in Public

• Comedian, actor, director, and producer Mike Birbiglia explores his mixed feelings about becoming a parent. His confessional and observational prose passages are interspersed with lyrical interludes written by his wife, poet J. Hope Stein...A lighthearted and uncomfortable portrait of fatherhood.

  — Publishers Weekly

• Sex, sympathy weight, and Birbiglia's sleep disorder are all fair game in this hilariously, sometimes shockingly, and always refreshingly honest look at having a kid and becoming new one's self.

  — Booklist

• Seasoned and rookie dads alike will appreciate Birbiglia's comic riffs on family life. His memoir is a can't-miss gift that's sure to make 'em laugh.

  — Bookpage

• Reading this raw and vulnerable book was almost like opening a page into Mike Birbiglia's diary; his emotion is truly refreshing. He is a wonderful comedian who will have you laughing and crying and thinking, all in the span of a single chapter.

  — Bookreporter