'I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out' Bill Hicks could have been on all the chat shows. He could have had his own show on prime time. He could have got rich and fat and frightened. But Hicks didn't go the easy way. He turned down the offers Satan made him. Instead he figured out his best shot at truth and then he said it. He attacked the lies that justified and prettified the carnage of the First Gulf War. He attacked the easy surrender of art to commerce, the demeaning cynicism of the marketing culture and the preposterous power of the mainstream media to confuse and corrupt. This is the first collection of all his stand-up routines, with extracts from his diaries, notebooks, letters and final writings. It reveals Hicks' work as both brilliant conventional stand-up comedy and as more interesting and dangerous: an invitation to a life lived without fear.