Remarks

Bill Nye was America's favorite humorist before the century turned, and Remarks proves why his wit still lands more than a century later. This collection of essays and anecdotes reads like a man holding forth at a saloon clever, self-deprecating, and impossible to put down. Nye turns his satirical eye on everything from the absurdities of formal education (he admits to using a knot-hole as a memory aid) to his tongue-in-cheek war with Noah Webster's dictionary, which he complains lacks narrative flair. His somnambulistic adventures and classroom escapades have the precision of a practiced performer who knows exactly when to land a joke. The prose fizzes with wordplay and gentle mockery of the pretensions Nye saw in literary culture, making these century-old observations feel oddly contemporary. If you want to understand how Americans laughed before the internet, this is where to look.