Revel with a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America
by: Stephen E. Kercher

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in bright, unclipped dust jacket. 575 pages, b&w illustrations. Stephen Kercher here provides the first comprehensive look at the satiric humor that flourished in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. Focusing on an impressive range of comedy--not just standup comedians of the day but also satirical publications like MAD magazine, improvisational theater groups such as Second City, the motion picture Dr. Strangelove, and TV shows like That Was the Week That Was--Kercher reminds us that the postwar era saw varieties of comic expression that were more challenging and nonconformist than we commonly remember. His history of these comedic luminaries shows that for a sizeable audience of educated, middle-class Americans who shared such liberal views, the period's satire was a crucial mode of cultural dissent. For such individuals, satire was a vehicle through which concerns over the suppression of civil liberties, Cold War foreign policies, blind social conformity, and our heated racial crisis could be productively addressed. Clean copy.