BuzzFlash gets sent a lot of books, DVDs, and CDs to review for potential sale as premiums. We are only able to pick about one out of ten that we receive.

It's particularly challenging to choose humorous premiums. What is funny to one person may be boring or offensive to another.

Of course, it doesn't take much to get a laugh out of Bush material, because as Jon Stewart observered the other night, Bush provides his own unintentional comic material that you don't even have to take out of context.

But what about humor that is not political in nature? We get those books too.

Usually, we pass them up, because we are a progressive website, after all -- and we try to choose items that have something political or liberal about them.

But occasionally, we come across an exception, as we did when thumbing through a new release: "The Dead Guy Interviews: Conversations with 45 of the Most Accomplished, Notorious, and Deceased Personalities in History."

First of all, it's an ingenious idea. But it takes skill to converse with a dead famous person and still provoke laughter. And that is just what author Michael A. Stusser does.

Stusser, apparently, researched the historical figures before he "interviewed" them in seance mode, so you learn a bit in each back-and-forth. Stusser also begins each conversation with an introduction that provides some historical context.

But what makes the book so droll is that Stusser comes off as an interviewer with a style somewhere between David Frost and Merv Griffin (now deceased).

It's all very campy. Stusser plays with our preconceptions of how the historical legends might sound if interviewed, but also lets them have their own say so to speak. The banter is waggish, if sometimes punnish, but amusing throughout.

Not all creative sparks develop into successful books, but this is one of them.

It's great light, droll reading -- and you can peruse the 45 interviews one at a time or in a single sitting.

Heck, it's just fun and even a little enlightening.

Great idea with comic execution to spare.

Anyway, that's what we think, and we don't know the author from Adam.