People You Know

George Ade was one of America's great early humorists, and this 1903 collection proves why his wit still resonates. Here is a world of small-town ambitions, social climbing, artistic pretensions, and the eternal struggle between what people pretend to be and what they actually are. Ade observes it all with an unflinching eye and a comedian's timing. The famous opening fable about an Indian trying (and failing) to reform his drinking sets the tone: these are moral tales wrapped in comedy, observations about human nature delivered with a twinkle. His characters scheme at social gatherings, artists starve in garrets, practical men dismiss dreams Ade captures the specific absurdities of American life at the turn of the century while hitting truths that never go out of style. Written in a colloquial voice that was revolutionary for its time, these sketches read like eavesdropping on a brilliant friend telling stories at a saloon. Whether he's dissecting the absurdities of respectability or the gap between aspiration and reality, Ade proves that the more things change, the more human nature stays gloriously, painfully the same.