Subtreasury of American Humor
edited by Katharine and E.B. White (1941)

This can be a bit slow going, so as with all anthologies, I’d suggest dipping in piece-by-piece. Edited by two stalwarts of The New Yorker, the best thing about browsing the Subtreasury is finding something really funny by some past master you’ve never heard of—I remember crowing over this book when I first read it as a teenager. Of course some stuff is un-PC—St. Clair McKelway's “An Affix For Birds,” for example, has a Japanese character straight from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”—but don’t let that stop you. You'll be surprised at how funny most of it still is.

Laughing Matters
edited by Gene Shalit (1987)

Russell Baker's Book of American Humor
edited by Russell Baker (1993)

There’s a bit more breadth in the Shalit—a good thing, since anthologies are the literary equivalent of dim sum—but Baker’s depth (more newspaper humor) means that both are worth having. Whereas the period 1900-45 needed only the Whites’ Subtreasury, the postwar period is too fragmented to be represented by one volume. Shalit does an especially good job adding a few cartoons, and even some sketches, reflecting how the so much of the funniest stuff was no longer to be found in books or magazines. These two are too heavy on The New Yorker; I wish that Shalit and Baker would’ve picked some material from other great print sources—say, Harold Hayes' Esquire, or Playboy. But as an introduction to the top writers (and some cartoonists) working in the field, they will do nicely.

The National Lampoon Anthology 1970-1980
edited by P.J. O'Rourke (1979)

Led by founders Doug Kenney (who went on to co-write "Animal House" and write/direct/produce "Caddyshack") and Henry Beard (who has gone on to write about a zillion books of humor), National Lampoon brought American comedy out of the Thirties and into the Seventies. This hard-to-find (but definitely worth it) book collects most of the best material from the Lampoon's spectacular first decade. Pieces by Kenney, Beard, Michael O'Donoghue, P.J. O'Rourke, John Hughes, Sean Kelly--NatLamp is the closest thing to a Rosetta Stone that contemporary comedy has--and getting this book is a lot easier and cheaper than tracking down the individual issues. (Trust me, I've dropped a mint on 'em.)

Fierce Pajamas
edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder (2001)

From 1925 to at least 1970, The New Yorker magazine was written humor in America, for better (at the beginning) and worse (at the end). Regardless, this recent collection of the best humor from its first seventy-five years belongs on the shelf of any serious humor reader. I prefer Harold Ross' taste to William Shawn's--which, by the end of his reign in 1987, was thirty years behind the curve in humor, an old man's reaction to a threatening world. But Tina Brown and David Remnick have done an admirable job of revivifying the "casual," and there's plenty of good recent stuff--including a parody of Raymond Carver done by Jon(99%) and me (1%). So I'm biased...but get it anyway, you won't be disappointed.

A Century of College Humor
edited by Dan Carlinsky (1982)

This is a collection of material selected from the various college humor magazines published between 1872 and 1980. It’s aged better than you’d expect, and there’s also some juvenilia from famous writers/artists worth checking out. Being of the post-National Lampoon generation, I’m a sucker for college humor. As infantile as it often is, college humor’s affection for parody and the high/low culture mix has come to dominate American comedy. So if you want to understand where we are, you should know the history of college humor, and this book is the only anthology I know of.

Here at The New Yorker
by Brendan Gill (1987)

One of the magazine's stalwarts presents a delightful guided tour through the magazine as it turned 50, when it was still a genteel(and very eccentric) American insistution, and not another chip in the Big Publishing poker game. A graceful, funny book that brings The New Yorker's classic characters to life.

Going Too Far
by Tony Hendra (1987)

Ex-National Lampoon editor Hendra's history of "sick, gross, black, sophomoric, weirdo, pinko, anarchist, underground, anti-establishment humor" is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in figuring out American comedy. Hendra is magisterial, and while it's easy to quibble with some of his omissions (Kurtzman and MAD aren't examined in sufficient detail; Python and The Firesign Theater are glossed over), Going Too Far is the single best history I've ever read. Absolutely gripping.

From Fringe to Flying Circus
by Roger Wilmut (1980)

An exhaustive, erudite, profusely illustrated history of the Oxbridge strain of British comedy in its most fruitful period, 1960-1980. The flameout of Peter Cook and death of Graham Chapman makes the optimistic end of the book feel more than a little tragic--but comedy is a young person's game, and Wilmut's book shows just how much great material was produced. Further reading: Hewison's Footlights, a history of the Cambridge dramatic club.

Saturday Night: A Backstage History
by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad (1985)

I haven't read the recent coffee-table history of the show, but it's hard to see how it could improve on this book. Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad dish all the dirt--and dispense solid analysis as well--as they chart SNL from its prehistory to Lorne's return in the mid-Eighties. If you're a fan of the original cast (or a more recent fan wondering what all the fuss is about) you owe it to yourself to check out this book.

Something Wonderful Right Away
by Jeffery Sweet (1987)

Some people might prefer the photo-filled coffee-table treatment done in-house for it's 40th birthday in 1999, but I think this collection of interviews with Second City alumni is the single best source.

A History of Underground Comix
by Mark James Estren

Is this strictly humor? No--but the fact that the undergrounds were inspired by Kurtzman's MAD, and in turn inspired Naitonal Lampoon, make them a fascinating link in the history of American humor after WW II. And a lot of the strips in this book are very funny--as well as very dirty, very scatological, and occasionally crude in all senses. But you owe yourself a look, if only for the moment when you say, "I can't believe somebody actually drew that."

James Thurber: Writings & Drawings
edited by Garrison Keillor (1996)

The best single volume of Thurber available—or possible, probably. Keillor's picks are great, and he had such funny stuff to work from.

My Life and Hard Times
by James Thurber (reprinted 1999)

This is Thurber’s terribly funny autobiography, and it’s a classic, a great introduction to the humorist. It's his warmest book--none of the anachronistic, therapy-worthy Men vs. Women bitterness that mars some of his stuff for me. I think people will be reading My Life and Hard Times 100 years from now. I hope they will be. NB: It’s included in the Library of America edition.

The Years With Ross
by James Thurber (reprinted 2001)

If you’re a fan of the old New Yorker, nothing could be more entertaining than James Thurber talking about his editor Harold Ross. If you want the facts about Ross, read A Genius In Disguise by Thomas Kunkel, and if you want the facts about The New Yorker, Brendan Gill’s Here at The New Yorker is probably more trustworthy than Thurber. But this book has a different goal, and smacks it dead-center with great fun.

The Benchley Roundup
edited by Nathaniel Benchley (reprinted 2001)

This is a collection of Benchley’s best material, assembled by his son. Though Thurber and White made it into the writing textbooks, and Parker gets endless attention from intelligent, overly dramatic teenaged girls, Benchley’s stylistic influence has probably been greater than any other American humorist. He invented the modern magazine parody while still an undergrad at Harvard, and was so successful as a professional that Benchley-esque offhandness is almost a prerequisite of writing humor in American English. He’s the Dave Barry of a more literate—and thoughtful—era.

Westward, Ha!
by S.J. Perelman (reprinted 1998)

Perelman’s best New Yorker pieces can be found in various anthologies, and his own collections give me the same giddy nausea as eating one rich dessert right after the other. But his style is incomparable, and he should be in any pre-1945 pantheon—so this is the one I like best. This description of a 1949 round-the-world journey (on the nickel of a magazine, no less!) gives Perelman’s vocabulary and linguistic fetishizing free reign, but without the then-current pop-cultural references that make much of his other work feel dated and small. His pal Hirschfeld’s drawings are great, too.

The Portable Dorothy Parker
edited by Dorothy Parker (reprinted 1991)

This book has long been considered the best single volume of Dorothy Parker’s work (it was edited by her, too) and I agree with everybody else. Since her territory was relationships, she—like Thurber—has a better reputation among writers than some of her strictly humorous contemporaries. Her poetry can lay it on a bit thick for me—after all, she was writing it in the 1920s—but Dorothy Parker can evoke a certain tender desperation and feisty defiance, like no other writer before or since. If "Sex in the City" were a little more honest, and a lot less cutesy, it’d be like Dorothy Parker.

You Know Me Al
by Ring Lardner (reprinted 1991)

Also well-anthologized, you probably read portions of this book in school--the letters from a bush-league baseball player to his girlfriend back home are from a different era, but Lardner's wonderful ear for American English makes it ring true, and very funny.

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
by Will Cuppy (reprinted 2002)

Will Cuppy died too early to finish this book, which is a shame, because what’s left is uniquely funny. Cuppy’s method was to read voraciously on a topic—sometimes for years—and distill all the strange and interesting facts he found into a short biography. There’s something a bit Victorian about it all—in a curio cabinet sort of way--but it’s also strangely contemporary in its ability to conjure up funniness from factoids. Cuppy’s uniqueness didn’t serve him well; he was one of the few respected humorists of the era who did not find a home at Ross’ New Yorker. Their loss, and Cuppy’s too—he killed himself rather than be evicted from his beloved garrett on Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village. (As somebody who has been in that exact situation, I can attest that the proper response is not suicide, but subletting.)

Leave it to Psmith
by P.G. Wodehouse (reprinted 1975)

This list would be naked without Wodehouse. His fans are legion, and nearly all of them are more knowledgable about him than I am. I’ll just say that I found this book tremendously inventive and amusing—like good television, but in handy book form. I’ve read a bit of Jeeves and Wooster, but not enough to comment past: “If you like Wodehouse at all, you’ll enjoy any of the Jeeves and Wooster.

Archy and Mehitabel
by Don Marquis (reprinted 1970)

Here, slightly edited, is what I wrote back in 1997 for Amazon (if it wasn't me, it was still right):
"... Archy is a cockroach, inside whom resides the soul of a free-verse poet; he communicates with Don Marquis by leaping upon the keys of the columnist's typewriter. In poems of varying length, Archy pithily describes his wee world, the main fixture of which is Mehitabel, a devil-may-care alley cat. Archy's poesy--that's what they called it in 1916--will linger in your head long after you finish the book.And the illustrations by George Herriman ("Krazy Kat") provide the perfect counterpoint. Marquis did the impossible: he made a cockroach loveable.

Roughing It
by Mark Twain (reprinted 1994)

Twain is terribly funny--still. You don't need me to tell you about Huckleberry Finn, so I thought I'd point to Twain's earlier travelogue. It reads surprisingly modern, so don't be put off.

James Thurber: His Life and Times
by Harrison Kinney (1995)

For serious fans only. Well-done and exhaustive—and frankly, rather more than I wanted to know about Thurber, much as I enjoy his writing. The writing life just isn’t active enough to be gripping reading. Add to this that the humorist’s life is often not so happy, and the whole enterprise seemed to close down on me as I read. But for the hardcore Thurber nut, it’s essential.

Robert Benchley: Laughter's Gentle Soul
by Billy Altman (1997)

See comment above about humorists not having the happiest of lives. However, for all the potential for drama, this book is curiously prim—to its disadvantage. Where Kinney’s bio of Thurber is exhausting even to hold, much less read, this book steadfastly refuses to dig very deeply at Benchley. The usual—and charming—anecdotes are trotted out, and the chronology is filled in, but for a writer so influential, and so understudied, it’s a shame that Altman couldn’t have done a little more investigation. But it will have to do for now, and maybe ever.

S.J. Perelman: A Life
by Dorothy Hermann

As with Thurber, Perelman did not age gracefully, either as a writer, or as a person. So as a fan, I found this book rather painful to read, especially in the curmudgeonly period. Still, the particulars of his life do illuminate him a bit, and for a writer so devoted to artifice, that's useful.

What Fresh Hell is This?
by Marion Meade (1989)

The details of Parker’s life have been sifted by several books, a movie, and God-knows-what-else (surely a one-woman show lurks out there?), all to satisfy generations of readers who suspect that they, too, might be deep, talented, or innately tragic. (Lest that strike you as overly harsh, some of them are right—and it’s not fair to judge an author by her fans, I’m just explaining why there’s so much Parkeriana.) This bio tells her funny, sad, self-destructive story well. One of Parker's main talents as a writerwas the authenticity of her voice, so as you read What Fresh Hell, you’ll catch yourself saying, ‘No, don’t do that, he’s bad for you...How could somebody write so smart and live so stupid?!…”

A Genius In Disguise
by Thomas Kunkel (1995)

If there's one non-humorist who merits inclusion in this list, it's Harold Ross, founding editor of The New Yorker. He founded the magazine as "a comic weekly" in 1925, enlisting friends and drinking companions like Benchley and Parker; it's even been said that Clarence Day's series "Life with Father" saved the magazine during its struggling early days. This book does a fine job at clearing away the entertaining, but incorrect notion that Ross was a yokel and a boob (an idea that Ross encouraged during his lifetime and Thurber codified after his death). Colorful subject, wonderful time period, great book.

Catch-22
by Joseph Heller (1961)

Yes, I know you read it in high school. But you probably didn't get it--it takes hardcore exposure to arbitrary authority to really enjoy this book, and while you may think your homeroom teacher qualified, he didn't. Try giving him the power to get you killed--that's what Catch-22 is all about, and what makes it such a useful metaphor for modern life.

A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

For me, the tragic circumstances that predated the publication of the book--the author died by his own hand, after his manuscript was rejected at a mess of big New York publishing houses--color my reading of it. And yet the book is a real delight--do yourself a favor and meet Ignatius J.; you won't forget him.

The Best of Alan Coren
by Alan Coren

A former Editor of Punch, Coren's my choice for funniest writer in Britain, certainly then, and maybe now, too. This collection of columni occasionally reads a bit dated, but a quick browse will let you know whether Coren's your taste. Very Pythonesque in places--and that's a compliment of course. You could also try Golfing for Cats or The Lady From Stalingrad Mansions.

Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis (1954)

This springy novel sends up academic life in 1950s Britain in a very sharp and appealing way.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson (1971)

The humor equivalent to On The Road. Dark, Absurd, cutting, energetic--you'll buzz through it on a contact high. Also worth picking up: The Great Shark Hunt, a collection from HST's juiciest period.

The Tummy Trilogy
by Calvin Trillin

It might seem strange to include an appreciation of food in this list, but while Trillin's books aren't exactly humor as it is usually defined, they are so relentlessly witty that I wanted to point them out. His collections of humor columns for The Nation are also funny, but as with all such stuff reach their "sell-by" date very quickly. I also have a soft spot for Conversations with My Father, because several essays take place in my beloved West Village. Until there is a Best of Calvin Trillin, The Tummy Trilogy will fill in nicely.

National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook Parody
by Doug Kenney, P.J. O'Rourke, Sean Kelly, et al. (1974)

Get it, get it, get it. This showed me what parody could do--in expert enough hands, of course. Painfully accurate, wonderfully written, and equally beautiful in design, this is the best self-contained parody ever produced, and the crowning achievement of National Lampoon. That it's out-of-print costs the Lampoon's moronic, craven caretakers thousands of dollars in sales every year. The follow up, The National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody, also has its moments, but its ambition blurs its focus.

National Lampoon's Encyclopedia of Humor
edited by Michael O'Donoghue (1973)

In 1972, National Lampoon editor was looking for something to do, and he hit upon this--a loosely connected collection of articles, cartoons and folderol, which was the purest distillation of O'Donoghue's aesthetic to ever in print. There are some classics here--Kenney's "First Blowjob"'; the infamous VW ad that nearly got NatLamp sued--and I'd consider it to be the second-most successful distillation (after the Yearbook) of the Lampoon aesthetic outside the magazine format.

The Harvard Lampoon Big Book of College Life
edited by George Meyer and Steven Crist (1978)

Before he became the dominant comedic voice of "The Simpsons," George Meyer was the latest in a long line of distinguished jokesters at the Harvard Lampoon. He and fellow editor Crist collect the cream of an extraordinary twenty years of creativity at the Lampoon; this book features early material by Henry Beard (National Lampoon), Ian Frazier (Dating Your Mom). Kurt Andersen (Spy) and many others. Probably the best modern college humor out there, and over 25 years later, it's still funny.

Bored of the Rings
by The Harvard Lampoon (1969)

Well, really by Henry Beard '67 andDoug Kenney '68, who created this novel-length parody of Tolkein as a tune-up for launching National Lampoon. Thirty years and well past a million copies later, Bored still stands up--to a point; much of the humor was very timely circa 1969, and so there's a lot of forgotten (and forgettable) Americana in the book. But the authors' hyperactive imaginations and relentless joke-telling carry the day.

A Day in the Life of Roger Angell
by Roger Angell (1968)

New Yorker lifer Roger Angell produced the occasional "casual" for the magazine, and these short humor pieces are collected in this slightly hard-to-find book. It's funny, but it's also an interesting example of how humor bridged the change from the Old Guard--Benchley, Thurber, Perelman--to the New--O'Donnell, Frazier, and Geng.

MAD About the Fifties

MAD About the Sixties

MAD About the Seventies
by the Usual Gang of Idiots

These books were the first fruits of DC's post-Gaines marketing of MAD, and probably the most necessary. They are collections of the best material from the first three decades of the monthly humor magazine. I prefer the early MAD most, then the Feldstein period until about 1973. Then, I have very little use for it outside of nostalgia. I don't think MAD ever really recovered from the founding of National Lampoon--creatively, at least--and by the end of the third volume, there's a sense that it's definitely on autopilot. The Eighties (and Nineties collection already in the pipeline?) hold no interest for me; MAD is yesterday's humor magazine tomorrow. That's not to say that the right people couldn't revivify the franchise--but it would have to change, and that's something nobody, not the editors who've been doing it for thirty years, or the corporate parent, is interested in.

The Complete Prose of Woody Allen
by Woody Allen

I suppose quibblers would put this in the post-1980 section, but since all of the books were published before then, I include them here. I pick this edition because I simply can't leave any of the trio out. Some of you might prefer Getting Even to Side Effects, or Without Feathers to both, but taken either individually or as a whole, these collections of short pieces demonstrate why Woody Allen will be remembered as one of the greatest American comedians. If you haven't read them, by them!

The Best of The Realist
edited by Paul Krassner

They don't make magazines like this anymore; in 1961, working out of his parents' basement, future Yippie and eventual publisher of Hustler magazine Paul Krassner started a "journal of freethought and satire." Certainly until the appearance of the underground newspapers in the late 60s, or maybe even National Lampoon in 1970, The Realist was the cuttingedge of comedy in print. This book is the best of the first 15 years or so. It was timely then, so it's dated now--but not so old that you won't get the jokes, and the fusion of humor and politics is likely to be a revelation to people raised on American corporate comedy, in all its bland and neutered glory.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader
by Fran Lebowitz

As with Woody Allen, I'm being cowardly and not picking which Lebowitz book I like best--and I'm also including it in the time when it was written. Both Social Studies and Metropolitan Life are sharply written, keenly observed, and terribly funny snapshots of New York as it was in the Seventies (and sometimes still is). I bumped into Fran Lebowitz on the subway once, and yes, she still looks like her author photo.

In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash
by Jean Shepherd

You probably know Jean Shepherd's work from Playboy, his radio programs, or the movie "A Christmas Story." Fans of that movie--and I am emphatically one--will enjoy the stories that it was adapted from. Shepherd's other books are also uniformly excellent--nostalgic without being saccharine, funny without being bitter.

Mr. Mike
by Dennis Perrin

This biography of comedy writer Michael O'Donoghue is a must for any fan of the early National Lampoon and/or the original SNL. It's a flawed book, too light on analysis (either Perrin is too much of a fan, or not enough time has passed to really put O'Donoghue into perspective), but a solid read and well worth a look.038072832X

Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!
by Albert Goldman

One of Goldman's first forays in the field of necro-biography, Ladies and Gentlemen is nonetheless fascinating. Is it a skewed portrait? Probably. So read it, then watch "Lenny" for the Lenny-Died-For-Our-Sins side. Or hear the man speak for himself in his autobiography (ghosted by Paul Krassner), How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.