The 50 Funniest American Writers*: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion

The 50 Funniest American Writers*: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion

115 ratings
3.4 out of 5 stars

Oct 13, 2011

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Product Description Ever wondered who makes a very funny person laugh? Wonder no more. Brought together in this Library of America collection are America’s fifty funniest writers—according to acclaimed writer and comedian Andy Borowitz. Reaching back to Mark Twain and forward to contemporary masters such as David Sedaris, Nora Ephron, Roy Blount Jr., Ian Frazier, Bernie Mac, Wanda Sykes, and George Saunders, The 50 Funniest American Writers* is an exclusive Who’s Who of the very best American comic writing. Here are Thurber and Perelman, Lenny Bruce and Bruce Jay Friedman, Garrison Keillor, Dave Barry, and Veronica Geng, plus hilarious lesser-known pieces from The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic, National Lampoon, and The Onion. Who does “one of the funniest people in America” ( CBS Sunday Morning) read when he needs a laugh? Review "Sublimely funny... This book is a treasure trove of laughter and an ideal gift for anyone who needs to be cheered up or refreshed, which these days means just about everyone you know."- Nell Minow The Movie MomA New York Times Best Seller -- The New York Times Editor's Choice and Best Seller -- Buffalo News "Had me laughing out loud." -- Jack Goodstein, Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Surprisingly excellent. Anthologies of this sort rarely live up to their claims, but the selections here are a great representation of American humor from the last 100 years." --Goodreads "Sublimely funny. . . . This book is a treasure trove of laughter and an ideal gift for anyone who needs to be cheered up or refreshed, which these days means just about everyone you know." -- Nell Minow, The Movie Mom "An indispensable book for anyone who likes to laugh. A surprisingly satisfying and consistently funny collection that might be the best American humor anthology on the market." Grade: A. -- Humor Lit Books Blog "You NEED this book. It's hilarious fun." -- R. L. Stine From the Author Does being funny get you girls? Growing up in Ohio, I was convinced that it did. I got this from a source I took to be representative of all women:   Playboy   centerfolds. Every issue, the Playmate Data Sheet would, with astonishing consistency, indicate that Miss Whenever's turn-on was "a sense of humor." (Turn-off? "Phony people.") I vowed to be a hilarious sincere person who would have sex with lots of naked people named Brandi.   I accepted this view of humor-as-pheromone despite mountains of real-world evidence to the contrary. At Shaker High, the girls mainly went for jocks whose idea of a witty retort was a wedgie. And if I had looked a little more closely at   Playboy's   monthly "Party Pics" feature, I might have noticed that the bunnies at Hef's Mansion gravitated towards the laps of people like Lee Majors, the star of "The Six Million Dollar Man" and not, to my knowledge, a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. What being funny got me, mostly, was a lot of free time. While the jocks were busy having tantric romps with cheerleaders, I kept myself occupied by reading Mark Twain, Woody Allen, and the many comic geniuses of   The National Lampoon.   Little did I know then that, over the course of a thousand dateless nights, a Library of America collection was being born.   So, getting back to my original question: does being funny get you girls? No. It gets you to be the editor of a humor anthology. About the Author Andy Borowitz is a writer and a comedian whose work appears in The New Yorker and at his satirical website, BorowitzReport.com, which has millions of readers around the world. The author of six books, he is the first-ever winner of the National Press Club's humor award and a two-time finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has been called a "Swiftian satirist" ( The Wall Street Journal), and "America's satire king" ( The Daily Beast). Contributions by: Mark Twain, George Ade, O. Henry Sinclair Lewis, Anita Loos, Ring Lardner, H. L. Mencken, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, S. J. Perelman, Langston Hughes, Frank Sullivan, E. B. White, Peter De Vries, Terry Southern, Lenny Bruce, Tom Wolfe, Jean Shepherd, Hunter S. Thompson, Woody Allen, Bruce Jay Friedman, Philip Roth, Nora Ephron, Henry Beard, Michael O’Donoghue, George W. S. Trow, Fran Lebowitz, Charles Portis, Donald Barthelme, Veronica Geng, John Hughes, Mark O’Donnell, Garrison Keillor, Bruce McCall, Molly Ivins, Calvin Trillin, Dave Barry, The Onion, Susan Orlean, Roy Blount Jr., George Carlin, Ian Frazier, David Rakoff, Bernie Mac, David Sedaris, Wanda Sykes, Jack Handey, David Owen, George Saunders, Jenny Allen, Sloane Crosley, Larry Wilmore

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I'm a fan of humor anthologies and have a collection that includes books by E.B. White, Gene Shalit, and many more. This is the best because it was assembled by one of the funniest guys around, Andy Borowitz, the first winner of the National Press Club's award for comedy and the guy behind the Borowitz Report, the most hilarious tweet feed there is. I grabbed my copy as soon as it arrived yesterday and read for an hour, enjoying old favorites and finding new favorites. Borowitz begins with Twain but instead of the usual jumping frog or whitewashed fence he makes an unexpected but absolutely perfect and timely choice with Twain's declaration of his candidacy for President. I was delighted to see George Ade, Charles Portis, Frank Sullivan, and Peter DeVries included -- for different reasons, all four have been neglected and all four merit thoughtful reconsideration. Their selections are also superbly chosen. I was even more delighted to find that Orchid Thief author Susan Orlean could be so funny, to see many of my current favorites like Sloane Crosley and David Rakoff and Wanda Sykes, and to be introduced to authors who are new to me like Jenny Allen and Henry Beard and Larry Wilmore. Dave Barry's discussion of men, women, and relationships and Bernie Mac's description of African-American funerals are priceless. The piece by Donald Barthelme on the questionnaire about writers and drinking and the Molly Ivins about Texas politics, "the finest form of free entertainment ever invented" are among my favorites because they show how the simple recitation of actual facts can be funnier than anything you could exaggerate or make up. This book is a treasure trove of laughter and an ideal gift for anyone who needs to be cheered up or refreshed, which these means just about everyone you know.