This volume is a collection of political cartoons by Thomas Nast that brought Boss Tweed to justice. The legendary Boss Tweed effectively controlled New York City from after the Civil War until his downfall in November 1871. A huge man, he and his Ring of Thieves appeared to be invincible as they stole an estimated $2 billion in today's dollars. In addition to the New York City and state governments, the Tweed Ring controlled the press except for Harper's Weekly. Short and slight Thomas Nast was the most dominant American political cartoonist of all time; using his pen as his sling in Harper's Weekly, he attacked Tweed almost single-handily, before The New-York Times joined the battle in 1870. The author focuses on the circumstances and events as Thomas Nast visualized them in his 160-plus cartoons, almost like a serialized but intermittent comic book covering 1866 through 1878.

The timely, true story of Thomas Nast, the granddaddy of political satire who destroyed a corrupt regime in 19th century New York City—with cartoons. He was an unethical, bullying, and narcissistic politician; a blow-hard real estate magnate and notorious swindler; a master manipulator who thrived off voter fraud, graft, and the collusion of his right-hand sycophants. This is the 1870s. The legendary William “Boss” Tweed, senator and third-largest landowner in New York City, is on a roll. He and his thieving minions have already duped the city out of an estimated two-billion dollars. It wasn’t going to be easy exposing him. He controlled the press—except for the magazine, Harper’s Weekly. And Harper’s had an invaluable weapon against the humorless and seemingly invincible Tweed: Thomas Nast, an influential political cartoonist who, day by day, brought Tweed’s corruption to light. With pen and ink, and a savage and righteous wink, Thomas Nast was determined to topple an empire. Told through Nast’s scathing 160-plus serialized cartoons, the remarkable and unbelievable true story of Nast vs. Tweed was not only unprecedented for its day, but it set the tone for the battle between the freedom of the press and political malfeasance that resonates well into the twenty-first century.

"Thomas Nast (1840-1902), the founding father of American political cartooning, is perhaps best known for his cartoons portraying political parties as the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant. Nast's legacy also includes a trove of other political cartoons, his successful attack on the machine politics of Tammany Hall in 1871, and his wildly popular illustrations of Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly magazine. In this thoroughgoing and lively biography, Fiona Deans Halloran interprets his work, explores his motivations and ideals, and illuminates the lasting legacy of Nast's work on American political culture"--

Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New Yorker People tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For desert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout How About Never--Is Never Good for You?, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny."

A lot has happened to the climate over the last decade, and the authors tackle the daunting statistics with their trademark humor. They realize it's better to laugh than cry when confronting mind-blowing facts about our changing world. Readers will become familiar with critical concepts, but they'll also smile as they learn about climate science, projections, and policy.

117 of Nast's most popular and most important political cartoons with explanations of the cartoon's social background, figures who are parodied and praised, and Nast's stand on the issues.

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart. Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry’s greatest story, written by one of the medium’s leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative. “To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses—and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way.”—Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther Williams