The leading political satirist skewers the pretensions and vanities
of America's equestrian classes. The marketing directors who make the
rules of commercial publishing regard humor of any kind as so
specialized a commodity that the chain bookstores make no distinction
between the works of Voltaire and those of Garfield the Cat; both
authors appear under signs marked HUMOR in order that the prospective
reader will be advised to approach them with caution.from 30 Satires
Known for his political essays, Lewis Lapham is a satirist who
belongs in the company of Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken and Mark
Twain. He writes with pointed and often savage wit; over the last
twenty years in the pages of Harper's Magazine he has experimented
with satire in its several formsas burlesque, pasquinade, invective,
and deadpan jest. This first assemblage of Lapham's satires presents
thirty pieces that hold their currency and humor against the tide of
social and political change that has engulfed American society over
the last twenty years. He reduces to absurdity most of the portentous
topics of the dayDickens' A Christmas Carol retold to praise the
virtues of remorseless greed; the hydrogen bomb introduced as a
solemn dinner guest who doesn't play tennis or speak English; gene
banks in the form of well-trained pigs that accompany their wealthy
owners in the first-class cabins of transatlantic jets.
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