THE STORIES: LAUGHTER IN THE SHADOW OF THE TREES. Martin, a brilliant, distinguished critic, is rapidly falling into a state of dementia. His wife, Felicia, remains the epitome of the supportive wife and loyal fan, even in the face of his insults and peev

Authoritarian Laughter explores the political history of the satire and humor magazine Broom published in Soviet Lithuania. Artists, writers, and journalists were required to create state-sponsored Soviet humor and serve the Communist Party after Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. Neringa Klumbytė investigates official attempts to shape citizens into Soviet subjects and engage them through a culture of popular humor. Broom was multidirectional—it both facilitated Communist Party agendas and expressed opposition toward the Soviet regime. Official satire and humor in Soviet Lithuania increasingly created dystopian visions of Soviet modernity and were a forum for critical ideas and nationalist sentiments that were mobilized in anti-Soviet revolutionary laughter in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Authoritarian Laughter illustrates that Soviet Western peripheries were unstable and their governance was limited. While authoritarian states engage in a statecraft of the everyday and seek to engineer intimate lives, authoritarianism is defied not only in revolutions, but in the many stories people tell each other about themselves in jokes, cartoons, and satires.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Shadow Witch" by Gertrude Crownfield. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Laughter's Cold Shadow takes on the darkest of subject matter: murder, rape, racism, the nuclear family, ninjas, Nazi’s, zombies, police brutality, drug cartels, hedonism, psychopathy, and more, albeit in a decidedly comedic fashion.