I've been a fan of Dave Berry since reading Swamp Story. This memoir is a nice addition to this backlist of essays and news columns. If you have read most of them, most of the information in this book won't be new, but it was nice to have a timeline on when the stories and ideas came from and when they happened. There were also some fun anecdotes and deeper elections, all told in Dave Berry style.

A fun, easy spring read

This. Book. Was. Hilarious.

Having been a Dave Barry fan for years, I sometimes wondered what he'd done in the years before his big success as a humor writer. In this new book, Barry tells fascinating tales about his incredible experiences..

The chapter about his experiences on the road covering political campaigns is hilarious as well as awesome. His Florida stories, especially about the Miami-Orlando feud, are great. His comments about the medical tribulations of an older person are spot-on.

I enjoyed the chapter that described how he got into writing fiction, but my absolute favorite chapter was the appendix and its self-deprecating humor.

...and now I will be going upstairs to reread my Dave Barry collection--

Rating: 5/5

Dave Barry has always felt like a funny uncle who shows up, tells a bunch of jokes that make you wheeze-laugh, and then suddenly says something poignant that hits you right in the sternum. Class Clown is exactly that—it’s hilarious, yes, but also reflective, grounded, and tender in a way that surprised me more than once.

I’ve been reading Dave Barry since I was 11, growing up in a little rural town where his books felt like a lifeline—this strange mix of absurdity, wit, and emotional intelligence that made me feel like someone out there saw the world the way I did. In many ways, he’s felt like he’s been with me ever since.

This book is full of classic Barry lines, Florida weirdness, and laugh-out-loud moments, but it also holds something deeper. You can feel the wisdom and the years behind the humor. He’s not just telling jokes—he’s sharing himself, and that’s what makes this so special.

Would I recommend it?

**Absolutely and unequivocally** —especially if you’ve ever loved him before, or if you just need to laugh and feel a little more human.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for the privilege of reading and reviewing this ARC.

As a long time fan of Dave Barry, I was very excited over the chance to read his memoir. He is one of the few comedy writers who repeatedly make me laugh out loud and look for someone to share him with. It was just as funny and clever as I expected. Dave did a retrospective look at his career using many portions of columns and stories about their origins to illustrate his career path and life. There was just enough personal information to give you a sense of him while protecting his family from scrutiny. He talked about his start in writing and how he parlayed a job as a newspaper reporter into his career as a comedy columnist. Then we got to hear lots of stories about where that led him, and some of the crazy experiences it led him into. It is written with a great sense for the absurd and genuine affection for his readers, his fans, and all the members of the public who provided him with such rich material. Since he retired from his regular column, we have to get our Barry fix from his “Year in review” columns and his novels, so it was a real treat to read this. Highly recommended - if you don’t get a lot of chuckles and even more smiles out of this book you need a funny bone implant.

Thanks to Netballey and Simon and Shuster for an ARC in exchange for a fair review.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the eARC.
Great read, I really enjoyed it. From the beginning about his childhood and the loving tributes to his parents as well as his hilarious musings and antics, I absolutely loved it all and highly recommend this book, We need books like this in these strange times ... we want to be uplifted!

Before this book, my knowledge of Dave Barry was pretty much limited to the last 20 years. So, diving into this was both refreshing and eye-opening—getting a glimpse at the not-always-funny moments that shaped the humorist we know today. From his childhood to his various (and sometimes unexpected) jobs, every step contributed to the wit and wisdom he brings to the world. What really stood out was how he’s managed to keep such a positive outlook—and helped so many readers do the same.

I especially enjoyed the early excerpts from his work and the collection of photos sprinkled throughout. And how did I miss the whole Rollerblade Barbie fiasco? Barry’s take on the highs and lows of his life made for a fascinating and entertaining read! And, I don't for one minute believe he gets his ideas at Costco! - 4.5 Stars

I loved Dave Barry when I was a kid, probably because my dad did. I read books about Barry turning 40 before I reached middle school. I enjoyed this look at the many aspects of his interesting life, from the celebrities he accidentally befriended, to the political candidates he awkwardly encountered.

As an extroverted introvert myself, I relate to him, and I feel a bit nostalgic whenever I read something of his. I like his dorky, gentle humor. I hope my dad will read this too.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I will purchase and share widely.

This was another quick and entertaining read from Dave Barry! I haven't read a lot of his nonfiction or biographies recently and had been sticking more to his fiction and mystery stories, so it was a refreshing change to get a real behind the scenes look into his lifetime. I didn't realize all of the cool experiences he has had! Like everything else he has written, this book kept me laughing and was an easy page-turner and an insight into Dave Barry's life and experiences. Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC!

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up by Dave Barry was received directly from the publisher and I chose to review it. I have been reading Dave Barry for my entire adult life, starting when I was in the US military during the Cold War in Asia and Europe in the Stars and Stripes newspapers. This is Daves autobiography. It is not boring or stale, it is written in Daves trademark brand of humor and I read the entire opus in one sitting on a cold rainy day. If you like Daves brand of humor, or have never heard of Dave because you had never read the Stars and Stripes, or if you like humuorous clean writing, give this, and all of Daves books a read.

5 Stars

I've been following Dave Barry since the late Eighties when his column would appear in the Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine. I've read most of his books. He is at his best when he is writing normally and just injecting humor. I don't always enjoy when he just totally goes off the wall. Class Clown is more of the former and it was enjoyable to get a look back into his life. And yes, his column on colonoscopy prep is truly one of the funniest things ever written!

Class Clown
By Dave Barry

This is the story of Dave's illustrious (???!!) career in his own words. If you are not familiar with his often bizarre but frequently funny wit and wisdom, welcome to Dave's world.

The book's title is well earned starting at a young age. Dave recounts many episodes throughout his childhood which earned him that title. As an adult – more or less – Dave has taken a meandering career path. He was a journalist of sorts; a teacher of effective business communications; a more or less freelance reporter on a wide variety of subjects; a humor columnist; a musician in a band; a screenplay writer; and a collaborator on several books – just to name a few of the fun jobs he has had throughout his life.

Now as he approaches 80 years old, he has written this memoir to pass on nuggets of wisdom he has amassed. While the book is entertaining and humorous, there are pearls of lessons learned to be found throughout. Take the time to consider them when you stop laughing.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

Another laugh out loud book from Dave Barry. Totally enjoyable. Recommended reading!

I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

What can I say? Dave Barry is one of my all time favorite writers and this book gives insight into how he grew into such a delight!
It begins in his childhood and talks about his early years and his family. Always fun.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dave Barry’s always entertaining style is fully on display in this excellent memoir. You will thoroughly enjoy it.

Dave Barry is one of funniest writers out there. This book was funny but with stories I have read before. Having said that Dave Barrys new book is still very funny and entertaining. Must read for his many fans. Thanks to netgalley and publisher for digital arc of this book mill

Full disclosure: I believe I am semi-intimately related to Mr. Dave Barry even though we've never met or enjoyed carnal knowledge. At only 9% into an advance e-copy of Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years without Growing Up (pub. date, May 13, 2025), I was so delighted, entertained, and aroused that I prematurely ejaculated on Facebook:

Dave grew up in the 1950s in Armonk … just a hop, skip and a jump from where I was growing up in Briarcliff Manor.

His parents were married the same date as mine were. They were both smart and funny like mine. His father became an alcoholic but recovered. Mine didn't. And on and on and on.

I don't know whether to be jealous or in awe that I'm seeing a kind of parallel life in an alternate reality if only my family had been sane, nonviolent, and Presbyterian.

But it turns out that's where our parallel existences diverged.

Although Barry claimed to have been aimless after leaving college, flitting from bookkeeping to a local paper to misery at the Associated Press to teaching writing to business people, from my point of view as a writer who's slogged through publishing mud for more than 40 years, he was a goddam bird dog—zeroing in on Gene Weingarten (another writer who makes me guffaw) at the Miami Herald's Sunday magazine, Tropic … which is where this book became my personal hilarious writer's tutorial.

Lessons from Dave Barry: To do a successful humor column, it is critical to care nothing about the truth of your subject, what your subject is, or basically anything. Sometimes the stupider the questions, the more entertaining the column. Hence, my imagined interview with Dave Barry about his new memoir:

BETSY: Why class clown? For goodness sake, you were only in school for 12 of your 77 years (well maybe 16 if you count college, but by then you seemed to have outgrown clowning for clowning's sake). So isn't it kind of disingenuous to qualify your life by 1/6.416666666 of its duration? Speaking of which, what do you think of clowns? In my experience, they are often sad and depressed and they make lousy dates.

DAVE: Aw gee, I never dated a clown, Betsy. I'm sorry you had such traumatic experiences. We only picked that title because everybody in the focus group voted for the cover with six-year-old me in a party hat. I do look pretty cute, despite the buzz cut my father insisted on giving me, but he was probably drunk when he did it, or in the middle of writing a sermon—did you like the parts about my dad?

BETSY: Very much, Dave. Your dad seems like a swell guy, the way he helped so many people and took you, with his camp group, to the march in Washington, DC, to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak. (BTW, nice historical significance, giving the memoir the obligatory gravitas required for a Pulitzer. Smart move.*) Speaking of which, you said you didn't realize at the time that you were witnessing history. What were you doing standing there in the crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial?

DAVE: To be honest, Betsy, my mom had insisted I wear laced shoes, and one of the staffers in my Camp Sharparoon inner city kids group thought it'd be a great joke to tie them together. So I spent a lot of the speech trying not to faint from the heat or fall down because we were packed so tight I couldn't bend over to untie them. But I've heard the speech on video many times—thank goodness for YouTube—and, like I said, it's mind-expanding.

BETSY: Speaking of almost dying, (I know we weren't but you seem okay with leaps of nonlogic), one of my favorite of your millions of quoted parts in the book (Great recycling! More leisure time to practice your broom and lawnmower marching skills and think about what to eat for dinner!) was your interview with Bob Graham, the then governor of Florida. And speaking of almost drowning in a harmonica accident (readers, you'll have to buy and maybe read the book to understand that—You're welcome, Dave!), have you ever played harmonica? I know you spent and spend a lot of time in a band—currently with a lot of famous writers—but how do you feel about blowing into a small box?

DAVE: Wow, what a creative question. Well, honestly, Betsy, I long ago stopped blowing into anything because it makes me hyperventilate, and particularly if I were to do so while standing next to a pool. I really valued Bob Graham's warning and establishment of the Harmonica Safety Day (Read the book!). Who knows how many lives besides mine have been spared. Full disclosure: I still do have impulses to blow into small containers, particularly if they make funny noises.

BETSY: What's a mutilated verb? I've heard of mutilated body parts and your description of your colonoscopy made me laugh so hard I may have fractured one of mine. But until your book, I never heard of "mutilated verbs."

DAVE: Wow, you're a real word person, aren't you? Try this:

It is my conclusion that the explosion in your head at the mention of this mutilation is due to the failure of the relief valve in your ears and may in the future result in sentences that are just too long for their own good.

See what I did? Lots of verb ideas have been mutilated into nouns: "conclusion," "explosion," "failure" and maybe some other ones that you added to this totally unauthorized revision of my book. Thus you pressed some really dull verbs into service. An unmutilated way to write it is:

"I conclude that your head exploded because your ears are blocked."

BETSY: Okay … So how about farts? You talk a lot about body emissions. Any final toots?

DAVE: Speaking of "toots," how come they don't rhyme with "foots" which brings me to footnotes. Did you like them?

BETSY: About footnotes**

_____________

*I'm not being cheeky. Dave has a whole section where he makes fun of newspaper writers' obsession with winning Pulitzers, so this sentence is a bit of an homage. BTW, Dave did win a Pulitzer—I'm not making that up—so I'm sure he won't take offense if he ends up reading this after all his book tour interviews, signing autographs, and setting fire to many pairs of perfectly good underpants (Read the book!).

**There are lots of footnotes in this book and, in the digital edition, the way they pop up when you tap the footnote number makes the jokes on top of jokes even funnier. Way to go, Dave!

_____________

DAVE: Thanks, Betsy.

BETSY: My pleasure, Dave. And thanks for the free book in exchange for an honest review … which I guess this really isn't. Whoops. Well, thanks anyway, and I'll think of you whenever I have nothing else to think about.

As a past fan of Dave Barry’s humor columns, I was pleased to see that he was at long last coming out with a memoir. This book is a retrospective of various periods of his life (childhood, schooling, early work days, etc.), and while he uses some of his past material (some of it particularly memorable in that it was widely publicized at the time it first came out) in the course of describing his experiences, the quotes are never overdone and his reflections on them are new. The politics chapter, though it purposely doesn’t encompass more recent times because Barry was no longer actively covering things for his column, feels most outdated even as he recognizes that it is. Much of the rest, to any past fan of Barry’s, will be like reconnecting at least briefly with an old friend. One ends the book hoping that even though he is 77 now, he’ll live many years more to do at least one more volume.

I had trouble reading this book because I was laughing so hard. Leave it to Dave Barry to revive our memories, and shed light on how ridiculous our history has been. He provides insight in to how reporting has changed over over the years. He definitely worked during the golden age of journalism., when a newspaper was a fountain of valued information. This is one memoir you don't want to miss.

When Sunday newspapers were the thing to have back when I was growing up (90s), Dave Barry's column and the comics were my sections of choice. I was always entertained by his humor even if I sometimes didn't get it.

I enjoyed the book as the mix of humor and seriousness that created his brilliance proved as enjoyable as those sunday morning newspapers.

While much of it was before my time, the column excerpts were still enjoyable with the background context of the book. Fans and non fans alike should enjoy the memoir.

I've enjoyed Dave Barry's work since I was a kid in the 80s. This is an excellent memoir - he's still just as funny as ever. I started reading this as soon as I was approved and read it whenever I had downtime, so it only took a couple days when it normally takes me WEEKS to finish a book. He includes clippings from old columns for context, but this isn't just a collection of previously published stuff. He keeps the serious topics to a minimum.