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This entertaining, informative collection covers the best of American satire-from Ben Franklin's cutting satiric attacks to Nathaniel Hawthorne's Celestial Railroad, Calvin Trillin's Old Marrieds, Mark Twain's American Abroad to P.J. O'Rourke's The Innocents Abroad-Updated, a late 20th-century take on Twain's classic piece. "Entertaining and satisfying...An excellent introduction."-Amazon.com.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction
Thomas Morton (ca. 1590-ca. 1647)
New English Canaan
Ebenezer Cook (fl. 1708)
The Sot-Weed FactorFrancis Hopkinson (1737-1791)
A Pretty Story
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
On Sending Felons to America
The Sale of the Hessians
Model of a Letter of Recommendation
Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One
Humourous Reasons for Restoring Canada
Alexander Hamilton (1712-1756)
The Tuesday Club
Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
The British Prison Ship
Hugh Brackenridge (1748-1816)
Modern Chivalry
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Tales of a Traveler
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Celestial Railroad
Fanny Fern (1811-1872)
Have We Any Men Among Us?
Tom Pax's Conjugal Soliloquy
To Gentlemen
Has a Mother a Right to Her Children?
Fresh Leaves
A Chapter for Parents
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
The Biglow Papers
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
The Devil's Dictionary
Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
Mr. Dooley
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
A Helpless Situation
Advice to Youth
The Art of Inhumation (from Life on the Mississippi)
American in Europe (from A Tramp Abroad)
The War Prayer
George Ade (1866-1944)
The Sultan of Sulu
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices
War Is Kind
Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873-1904)
How Little Red Riding Hood Came to be Eaten
How Rudeness and Kindness Were Justly Rewarded
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Xingu
Expiation
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Rondo on an Ancient Theme
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
A Letter from the Queen
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
A Day at the Republican Convention
At the Democratic Convention
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Words, Words, Words
Far From Well
Comment
One Perfect Rose
James Thurber (1894-1961)
Tom, the Young Kidnapper
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Ballad of the Landlord
Ku Klux
American Heartbreak
Kurt Vonnegut (1922- )
In a Manner That Must Shame God Himself
Russell Baker (1925- )
Universal Military Motion
Art Buchwald (1925- )
Pictures from Vietnam
Telling the Truth
Gore Vidal (1925- )
Ronnie and Nancy: A Life in Picture
Calvin Trillin (1935- )
Old Marrieds
P. J. O'Rourke (1947- )
The Innocents Abroad, Updated
Molly Ivins (1944- )
H. Ross Went Seven Bubbles Off Plumb (and Other Tales)
New Heights of Piffle
Summary
This entertaining, informative collection covers the best of American satire—from Ben Franklin's cutting satiric attacks to Nathaniel Hawthorne's Celestial Railroad, Calvin Trillin's Old Marrieds, Mark Twain's American Abroad to P.J. O'Rourke's The Innocents Abroad—Updated, a late 20th-century take on Twain's classic piece. "Entertaining and satisfying...An excellent introduction."—Amazon.com.
