Funny Times Presents the Best of the Best American Humor

Funny Times Presents the Best of the Best American Humor PDF Author: Raymond Lesser
Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)
ISBN:
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Provides a selection of the most hilarious cartoons, columns, essays, and comic strips from The Funny Times, a monthly publication containing selections of humor from America's magazines, newspapers, and other sources.

Funny Times Presents the Best of the Best American Humor

Funny Times Presents the Best of the Best American Humor PDF Author: Raymond Lesser
Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)
ISBN:
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Provides a selection of the most hilarious cartoons, columns, essays, and comic strips from The Funny Times, a monthly publication containing selections of humor from America's magazines, newspapers, and other sources.

Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor

Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor PDF Author: Alleen Pace Nilsen
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Review: "This unique encyclopedia treats the concepts, persons, themes, and media of 20th-century American humor and humor studies. More than 100 alphabetically arranged entries highlight a broad range of humor-related topics from wit, understatement, and ambiguity to late-night talk shows and the Internet."--"Outstanding Reference Sources," American Libraries, May 2001

American Humor

American Humor PDF Author: Constance Rourke
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590170793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Stepping out of the darkness, the American emerges upon the stage of history as a new character, as puzzling to himself as to others. American Humor, Constance Rourke's pioneering "study of the national character," singles out the archetypal figures of the Yankee peddler, the backwoodsman, and the blackface minstrel to illuminate the fundamental role of popular culture in fashioning a distinctive American sensibility. A memorable performance in its own right, American Humor crackles with the jibes and jokes of generations while presenting a striking picture of a vagabond nation in perpetual self-pursuit. Davy Crockett and Henry James, Jim Crow and Emily Dickinson rub shoulders in a work that inspired such later critics as Pauline Kael and Lester Bangs and which still has much to say about the America of Bob Dylan and Thomas Pynchon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

An Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor

An Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor PDF Author: Bennett Cerf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American wit and humor
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Benjamin Franklin's Humor

Benjamin Franklin's Humor PDF Author: Paul Zall
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813171865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Although he called himself merely a “printer” in his will, Benjamin Franklin could have also called himself a diplomat, a doctor, an electrician, a frontier general, an inventor, a journalist, a legislator, a librarian, a magistrate, a postmaster, a promoter, a publisher—and a humorist. John Adams wrote of Franklin, “He had wit at will. He had humor that when he pleased was pleasant and delightful . . . [and] talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill, to the promotion of moral and political truth.” In Benjamin Franklin’s Humor, author Paul M. Zall shows how one of America’s founding fathers used humor to further both personal and national interests. Early in his career, Franklin impersonated the feisty widow Silence Dogood in a series of comically moralistic essays that helped his brother James outpace competitors in Boston’s incipient newspaper market. In the mid-eighteenth century, he displayed his talent for comic impersonation in numerous editions of Poor Richard’s Almanac, a series of pocket-sized tomes filled with proverbs and witticisms that were later compiled in Franklin’s The Way to Wealth (1758), one of America’s all-time bestselling books. Benjamin Franklin was sure to be remembered for his early work as an author, printer, and inventor, but his accomplishments as a statesman later in life firmly secured his lofty stature in American history. Zall shows how Franklin employed humor to achieve desired ends during even the most difficult diplomatic situations: while helping draft the Declaration of Independence, while securing France’s support for the American Revolution, while brokering the treaty with England to end the War for Independence, and while mediating disputes at the Constitutional Convention. He supervised and facilitated the birth of a nation with customary wit and aplomb. Zall traces the development of an acute sense of humor throughout the life of a great American. Franklin valued humor not as an end in itself but as a means to gain a competitive edge, disseminate information, or promote a program. Early in life, he wrote about timely topics in an effort to reach a mass reading class, leaving an amusing record of early American culture. Later, Franklin directed his talents toward serving his country. Regardless of its origin, the best of Benjamin Franklin’s humor transcends its initial purpose and continues to evoke undying laughter at shared human experiences.

Great American Wit

Great American Wit PDF Author: Robert E. Drennan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510724397
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The perfect gift for the snarky literature fan in your life! “Stop looking at the world through rose-colored bifocals.” “His mind is so open, the wind whistles through it.” “You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.” Ever wonder where these sayings came from? For decades, the dining room of New York’s legendary Algonquin Hotel was a hub of letters and humor. Cocktails swirled as writers, humorists, actors, and critics poked fun at culture, the arts, and one another. In this lively tribute, today’s readers will come to understand why Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and Dorothy Parker represent the epitome of quips and comebacks—wit that still packs a punch decades later. Each chapter contains: A short biographical sketch A photo of the great American wit Handpicked collection of quotes and anecdotes Packaged in a contemporary cover, this is the perfect gift or coffee table book. Discover the sarcasm, double entendres, insults, and jabs that earned these sharp minds the collective title of “the Vicious Circle.”

What's So Funny?

What's So Funny? PDF Author: Nancy A. Walker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780842026888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Critical studies attempting to define and dissect American humor have been published steadily for nearly one hundred years. However, until now, key documents from that history have never been brought together in a single volume for students and scholars. What's So Funny? Humor in American Culture, a collection of 15 essays, examines the meaning of humor and attempts to pinpoint its impact on American culture and society, while providing a historical overview of its progres-sion. Essays from Nancy Walker and Zita Dresner, Joseph Boskin and Joseph Dorinson, William Keough, Roy Blount, Jr., and others trace the development of American humor from the colonial period to the present, focusing on its relationship with ethnicity, gender, violence, and geography. An excellent reader for courses in American studies and American social and cultural history, What's So Funny? explores the traits of the American experience that have given rise to its humor.

Great American Humor

Great American Humor PDF Author: Gerd De Ley
Publisher: Hatherleigh Press
ISBN: 1578266106
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
Mark Twain wrote: "Humor is mankind's greatest blessing." Consider yourself blessed a thousand-fold with the new compilation Great American Humor by Gerd de Ley. Great American Humor collects 1000 wise and witty jokes, clever sayings and smart one-liners from well-known American humorists, actors, comedians, politicians, and personalities into a terrific volume guaranteed to generate laughs. Great American Humor features quips and quotes from well-known figures such as Mark Twain, Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Milton Berle, Ellen DeGeneres, Rodney Dangerfield, Robin Williams, Mae West, Mitch Hedberg, Joan Rivers, George Carlin, and the list goes on. Carefully researched and culled for maximum guffaws, Great American Humor captures the unique spirit of American wit and features more than enough jokes, puns and riddles to have everyone laughing.

All Joking Aside

All Joking Aside PDF Author: Rebecca Krefting
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421414295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
A professor of American Studies—and stand-up comic—examines sharply focused comedy and its cultural utility in contemporary society. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice In this examination of stand-up comedy, Rebecca Krefting establishes a new genre of comedic production, “charged humor,” and charts its pathways from production to consumption. Some jokes are tears in the fabric of our beliefs—they challenge myths about how fair and democratic our society is and the behaviors and practices we enact to maintain those fictions. Jokes loaded with vitriol and delivered with verve, charged humor compels audiences to action, artfully summoning political critique. Since the institutionalization of stand-up comedy as a distinct cultural form, stand-up comics have leveraged charged humor to reveal social, political, and economic stratifications. All Joking Aside offers a history of charged comedy from the mid-twentieth century to the early aughts, highlighting dozens of talented comics from Dick Gregory and Robin Tyler to Micia Mosely and Hari Kondabolu. The popularity of charged humor has waxed and waned over the past sixty years. Indeed, the history of charged humor is a tale of intrigue and subversion featuring dive bars, public remonstrations, fickle audiences, movie stars turned politicians, commercial airlines, emergent technologies, neoliberal mind-sets, and a cavalcade of comic misfits with an ax to grind. Along the way, Krefting explores the fault lines in the modern economy of humor, why men are perceived to be funnier than women, the perplexing popularity of modern-day minstrelsy, and the way identities are packaged and sold in the marketplace. Appealing to anyone interested in the politics of humor and generating implications for the study of any form of popular entertainment, this history reflects on why we make the choices we do and the collective power of our consumptive practices. Readers will be delighted by the broad array of comic talent spotlighted in this book, and for those interested in comedy with substance, it will offer an alternative punchline.

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces PDF Author: John Kennedy Toole
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802197620
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).