Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Vol 1

Before SNL, before The Onion, before every American comedian who ever lived, there was this: the architects of a nation's sense of humor. Thomas Lansing Masson assembled this volume from the writers who invented American wit as we know it. Here Mark Twain gives voice to Mississippi raftsmen whose profanity is so elaborate it constitutes a language unto itself. Benjamin Franklin delivers sly, window-opening maxims that still feel freshly minted. Oliver Wendell Holmes skewers Boston's pretensions with a surgeon's precision. Washington Irving wanders through Dutch New York with a smile playing at his lips. These aren't dusty relics in a museum display case. They're still funny. The jokes about lawyers still land. The observations on human nature still sting. The regional voices still crackle with life. This is where American humor learned to be American: irreverent, democratic, willing to laugh at anybody, including itself. For anyone who wants to understand what made this country's comic voice.