A life-changing, perception-altering wonder! "Pranks!" is unlike anything I know. I discovered it by accident when I was working in a used bookstore, about 8 or 9 years ago. I was a teeneager just becoming aware of how repressed and stultifying suburbia was--and of the people over the decades who have tried to blast open our minds. Even so, I didn't quite know what to make of people like Joe Coleman, who geeked mice & blew himself up at performances (check out the photos, as well as the video "Mondo New York.") or Mal Sharpe & Jim Coyle, who tape-recorded some of the most absurd pranks ever. They walk into a pharmacy & ask the pharmacist for advice on home surgery! The pharmacist just freaks out after talking to them seriously for awhile--the whole transcript is here. Then there's Mark Pauline, with his Survival Research Laboratories (robots/machines he programs to destroy one another, often decorated with animal corpses) and the infamous Karen Finley. Of course there are the usual suspects--Tim Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Jello Biafra, plus a whole host of misfits, misanthropes, iconclasts, outcasts, and outlaws to round out this wildly in-depth work. Tons of pictures, millions of words. It really blew me wide open. I love this definition of pranks. They're exposing reality for the social construct it is, showing how easily people go along with it, how they adapt to even the most bizarre "set up" and often revealing the power structures that control our lives, and subvert them with not (only) political action, but humor, razor-sharp wit, sparkling, spiky intelligence--and a whole lot of balls. Absolutely worth every penny!