Laughing Matters Treasury of American Humor

Laughing Matters includes prime samples of dozens of humorists, poets and artists, from classic authors like Mark Twain and Finley Peter Dunne, to early 20th Century greats (Benchley, Parker, Thurber, Saroyan, etc.), to stage, movie and radio excerpts, to popular comic strips, and farce from MAD Magazine and NATIONAL LAMPOON. The book has no chapter or category divisions. Shalit recommends that these short stories, poems, cartoons and article excerpts be read in order of publication, as there's a certain logical flow to the material. Thus for example, Philip Roth's "Letters to Einstein" is followed by a panel cartoon that illustrates an Albert Einstein quote.