New York Times Bestseller: This anthology of Erma Bombeck’s most memorable and humorous essays is a tribute to one of America’s sharpest wits.
When she began writing her regular newspaper column in 1965, Erma Bombeck’s goal was to make housewives laugh. Thirty years later, she had published more than four thousand columns, and earned countless laughs—from housewives, presidents, and everyone in between....

Once an aspiring writer, Olga traded literary ambition for marriage and motherhood; when Mario dumps her after 15 years, she is utterly unprepared. Though she tells herself that she is a competent woman, nothing like the poverella (poor abandoned wife) that mothers whispered about in her childhood, Olga falls completely apart. Routine chores overwhelm her; she neglects her appearance and forgets her manners; she throws herself at the older musician...

A dual narrative in which a woman finds a cookbook buried in the basement of her new home and becomes captivated with the cookbook's previous owner, a 1950s housewife. Dissatisfied with her own life, she becomes absorbed in learning the story--and the secrets--of the last woman who lived in her house.