1997 "First Edition" stated on copyright page; Cliff Street Books publishers; smaller hardbound; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket very good.
 
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The 2000 Year Old Man was actually born in 1950, when Carl Reiner bought a $138 Revere tape recorder, plugged in the microphone, and instead of saying, "Testing, testing," turned to Mel Brooks and asked, "Is it true that you were at the scene of the Crucifixion some 2000 years ago?" As Brooks' imagination took flight, the old man uttered his first remembrance of things past with a moan of "Oooooooohboy." And then: "I knew Christ, Christ was a thin lad, always wore sandals. Hung around with 12 other guys. They came in the store, no one ever bought anything. Once they asked for water."Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks ad-libbed their first interviews between the miraculous ancient sage and the reporter covering his history-making arrival in the United States. The 2000 Year Old Man knew everyone from Jesus to Shakespeare, Cleopatra to Paul Revere. He was there when men discovered women, and he dated Joan of Arc. The feisty raconteur had been married several hundred times. He had 42,000 children -- "and not one comes to visit me." The Jewish Methuselah had something to say about everyone and everything -- from religion to soul kissing, from taxes to nectarines: "Half a peach, half a plum. It's a hell of a fruit!" Brooks never knew what Reiner was going to ask, and Reiner only knew that he would never get the same answer twice. Reiner calls it "writing with the mouth."...