Naked Pictures of Famous People

Stewart’s first book, a collection of comic essays and sketches from before his Daily Show fame, imagines the famous in absurd private moments: a breathless teen-magazine diary for Princess Diana, a Kennedy family Hanukkah, Larry King fielding crank letters. The pieces are looser and more surreal than his later television satire, closer to magazine humour writing, but the instinct is already there, deflating celebrity and power by picturing them up close and ridiculous. A slim, uneven, frequently very funny debut.