There’s a lot going on, all the time. It may feel overwhelming. Don’t worry. It will end. This Won’t Help is here for you in the meantime—with 100 short, sharp, satirical essays that skewer a world raging with inaction, while maximizing the profits of self-destruction. As if that would help!

Eli Grober’s biting, Swiftian prose spares no one—not the megalomaniacal billionaire fleeing Earth for a better life on unlivable Mars, not an extremely online family living completely off-grid, not even a fossil-fuel lobbyist insisting we all stop using straws. (Eli does spare a kind thought for the supremely intelligent readers with the good sense to buy this book.) Maybe, just maybe, descending through the inferno of our environmental, economic, and political landscape will help us find real solutions to the hypocrisy and dysfunction that surrounds us. But probably not.

Part catharsis, part diagnosis, this divinely wry collection from New Yorker and McSweeney’s satirist Eli Grober will strike a chord with readers who are dismayed by the chaos of our times. None of it will help—but a few good laughs won’t hurt. Probably.

"Confronting a world overcome by injustice and disaster, Eli Grober has rolled up his sleeves and written very silly jokes—which keenly, nimbly, hilariously encapsulate our ridiculous resistance to making things better."

"Few humorists can successfully grapple with the end of all life on Earth. Thankfully, Eli Grober is up to the task. This book may not save us, but it will make the giant hydrothermal vent tubeworms view us a little more kindly."

"This Won’t Help is a veritable chef’s kiss of biting, of-the-moment satire. This book may not save the world, but then again . . . maybe it will?"

"This Won’t Help has all the hallmarks of what makes Eli Grober’s writing great: incisive cultural commentary, scathing political satire, and tender moments of sneaky sweetness. For anyone feeling fear about the future or angst about the present, this collection of hilarious essays is a welcome salve. If you like laughing, you’re gonna LOVE this book!"

"Eli is an insightful and hilarious writer, and this book made me laugh, but he’s dead wrong when he says This Won’t Help. I thought of at least four ways it helps, and if you find me, I’ll tell you."

"If you’ve ever wished your anxieties had punch lines, this book is for you."

"I rarely physically laugh at anything, and this had me going. Eli’s satire would be wasted on a sane society. He’s the perfect fiddler for the burning city on a hill."

"2023 Foreword INDIES Finalist

"Guaranteed, nonstop laughs (and only some sobbing). At this point, ditching plastic straws probably won’t save our dying planet, but buying this book will at least ensure that you’ll be laughing as the world burns. Worse comes to worst, you can roll up the pages and make yourself some paper straws.

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"Eli Grober is one of the very funniest writers."

"When the state of the world is so uncomfortable or devastating that the impulse is to look away, Eli makes me want to sit and stare (and also laugh until I cry). Eli’s ability to break down cultural absurdities to their most elemental forms, his incisive wit and his delightful turns of phrase hold us in a place where we can understand things for what they truly are—and it’s only in this place that we can navigate a path through to the other side."

"An absolutely hilarious collection. Things aren’t looking all that great right now, but while we’re still here we might as well try and make the best of it, and reading Eli Grober’s masterful satire in This Won’t Help is a good place to start—before it all ends."

"Eli manages to address the biggest, scariest issues of the day without wallowing in hopelessness or using despair as a cheap substitute for a punchline. A ton of fun, and a masterful display of joke writing."

"Eli Grober has written approximately a million essays and they are all funny and thoughtful and somehow comforting! The debate of quality versus quantity is over. Eli Grober does BOTH."