The Comedians
Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy
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4.5 • 20 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Funny [and] fascinating . . . If you’re a comedy nerd you’ll love this book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, National Post, and Splitsider
Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, this groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years.
Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, the book introduces the first stand-up comedian—an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the civil rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century.
“Entertaining and carefully documented . . . jaw-dropping anecdotes . . . This book is a real treat.” —Merrill Markoe, TheWall Street Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nesteroff, a former stand-up comic and the host of the Classic Showbiz Talk Show event series in Los Angeles, artfully charts the evolution of American comedy as an industry, from its beginnings in 1920s vaudeville to the podcasts of today. Nesteroff deftly interleaves the biographies of renowned comics, such as Abbot and Costello, Buddy Hackett, Joan Rivers, and Chris Rock, with those of lesser-known but equally influential performers such as Frank Fay, the first comedian to perform his routine standing in one place, in a narrative tracing changes in the industry such as the introduction of television. Though he doesn't dwell too long on any performer or subplot the mention of the influence of the Internet seems particularly brief this is still an informative and, above all else, entertaining study.
