"Jules Siegel is an emotionally tormented, perverted, dope-using hippie bastard -- who can write one hell of a book.

"Mad Laughter is a brilliant account of Siegel's life, which must be one of the most colorful lives in 20th-century history. If you have ever wondered -- and who hasn't? -- how a boy born into a family of criminally insane Bronx Jews could wind up living in a hut in the Mexican jungle writing for Playboy and Rolling Stone, then your answer is here.

"Though I've never spoken to him in person, Siegel has written Mad Laughter in a way that makes me feel like I've talked with him over dinner every week for years. Granted, our conversations had a lot do to with drugs, marital problems, organized crime, sex, and intimate bodily fluids, but that's what made them so enjoyable.

"Siegel would never admit it, but he offers a valuable perspective on life in this book. (I had two profound thoughts before I even finished reading the Preface. Any book like that is worth reading!)

"I really enjoyed the book, Jules. I can only begin to comprehend the effort it must have taken to spill so much intense emotion and personal business out onto paper to share with the world, but you did it -- and you did it well." -- Dave Brandt

"Jules Siegel's Mad Laughter is a rollicking true life adventure that projects a sumptuous and vivid mind movie in your head all the way through." --John Roberdeau Drury, former Design Director, Disney Imagineering

"Jules Siegel has blessed us with a grand tale, grandly told. Reading this book brings the scary pleasure of walking alongside him as he takes us through the ups and downs of his never-dull life. If this work doesn't make Jules Siegel a household name, there is no justice in the world." --William Simon, International bestselling author of more than a dozen books including The Art of Deception, iCon (biography of Steve Jobs), and Gorgeous Disaster.

"Thank you for sharing your book. I had to let you know how much I'm enjoying your tale. It was a liberating day when I realized that insanity is the rule rather than the exception in the human condition, and it's been my experience that exposing it to humor and scrutiny is a necessity for surviving, even thriving. You've accomplished both with "cojones grande" and it doesn't feel at all like I'm eavesdropping into your private life. It could just as easily be my own, though much more remarkable! --Teressa Terry, Graphic/Web, Designer, Opportunity Interactive, Inc.

"Jules Siegel's Mad Laughter is quite personal, but very representative of the times, the values, the confusions, the aspirations of an era that has been hijacked and demonized by the right wing. For me, it is a strong addition to the literature that helps us make sense of free love and all the contradictions. With insights into the publishing world, the struggles of writing, the complexities of relationships, it is clearly a labor of love, stubbornly done to tell the story exactly the way the author wanted." --Don Hazen, Executive Director, Independent Media Institute; Executive Editor, AlterNet

"Read Mad Laughter this weekend...and I'm overwhelmed by emotion. I loved your book; it brings new meaning to the words painfully honest, a phrase I thought I had already defined myself and today I'm kind of blown away by who you and your family really are." --Libby Spencer, Last One Speaks

"What a wonderful book! I read it cover to cover and came out the back end feeling I intimately know the cast of characters that makes up your wacky, intriguing, cursed family. They have a gritty Dickensian feeling of reality about them -- Dickens kept coming to mind as I read (Great Expectations, Bleak House) and maybe a dash of De Quincey." --Larry Lockridge, Professor of English, New York University

"I finished Mad Laughter this weekend, and I must say I found it totally engrossing. I enjoyed it immensely." --Name Withheld, Republican

"It looks fabulous!" --Richard Minsky, Founder, Center for the Book Arts