Published Books
Humor and the Common Good
by Michael K. Cundall, Jr.
Published: August, 2025
de Gruyter Publishers
Humor and the Common Good is my new book focusing on how humor, laughter, and mirth, are important parts of the common good. The idea of the common good has been around for millennia, but the role of humor in achieving the common good has never been discussed before now. If you're wondering why our politics is so divided and divisive, this book will help you to see what's missing and why a laugh is really important for doing the hard work of politics.
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Find a copy here.
Putting Humor to Work
Published: August, 2025
Palgrave MacMillan
Putting Humor to Work, is a new text designed to help people understand current research on how effective humor and laughter can be. This text is unique in being the only one on the market that addresses the ethical issues we face when trying to understand how and what humor to use. This book leads the reader on a fun and warm journey through the recent research on humor and laughter, in a way that's interesting, engaging, and offers a few laughs to boot.
Sacred Laughter
Edited by Michael K. Cundall, Jr.
Published: Ocotber, 2025
Bloomsbury Publishers
Sacred Laughter: Laughter and Humor in Religious, Cultural, and Mythic Traditions, to be released in October 2025 through Bloomsbury Publishers, looks at how humor and laughter have played a role in various religious, mythical, and cultural traditions. From Buddhism, to Christianity, Islam, Shinto, and ancient Japanese myths, the chapters in this text relate the ways laughter and humor have influenced our more spiritual sides of life.
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The Humor Hack
by Michael K. Cundall, Jr.
Published: April, 2022
Wipf & Stock Publishers
The Humor Hack, was released in April 2022 through Wipf and Stock Publishers. In this book I help you "hack" humor into your life. I filled it with discussions of humor, funny examples, and exercises, to help you understand how humor works, where it's most effective, and then train you to use it more effectively. It's 13 chapters of fun, humor, laughs, and of course mirth. Written with the general reader in mind, this book is sure to entertain and help you increase the laughs in your life.
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The Pretty Progressive website lists this as one of the best recent uplifting book out there.
Cases on Applied and Therapeutic Humor
by Michael K. Cundall, Jr. & Stephanie Kelly
Published: June 2021.
IGI Global
Cases on Applied and Therapeutic Humor focuses on humor in medical care and will discuss issues in humor research, assessment of the effectiveness of humor in medical settings, and examples of medical care in specific health settings. The chapters will explore how propriety, effectiveness, perception, and cultural variables play a role in using humor as therapy and will also provide practical case studies from medical/healthcare professionals in which they personally employed humor in medical practice. This book is ideal for medical students, therapists, researchers interested in health, humor, and medical care; healthcare professionals; humor researchers; along with practitioners, academicians, and students looking for a deeper understanding of the role humor can play as well as guidance as to the effective and meaningful use of humor in medical/healthcare settings.