Chast has written or illustrated more than a dozen books, including "Unscientific Americans", "Parallel Universes", "Mondo Boxo", "Proof of Life on Earth", "The Four Elements" and "The Party After You Left: Collected Cartoons 1995–2003" (Bloomsbury, 2004). In 2006, "Theories of Everything: Selected Collected and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978–2006" was published, collecting most of her cartoons from "The New Yorker" and other periodicals. One characteristic of her books is that the "author photo" is always a cartoon she draws of, presumably, herself. The title page, including the Library of Congress cataloging information, is also hand-lettered by Chast.