THE ESSENTIAL LENNY BRUCE takes you into a vivid, insanely original, devastatingly funny world. Lenny Bruce, born Leonard Alfred Schneider, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, free-wheeling, and critical style of comedy which contained satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon in 2003.

Bruce paved the way for counterculture-era comedians. His trial for obscenity was a landmark of freedom of speech in the United States. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him third (behind Richard Pryor and George Carlin) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.