Cartoonists are finally getting their due. Compiled and edited by Lee Lorenz, former art editor of The New Yorker and an acclaimed cartoonist in his own right, The Essential Cartoonists library is a celebration of this unique visual art form. Each volume focuses on one truly outstanding artist and features approximately 150 of the artist's best cartoons, as well as insight into background, influences, inspirations, working habits, and more. Launching the series: The Essential George Booth and The Essential Charles Barsotti. In Booth, Lorenz traces the career of this New Yorker icon. Known primarily for his unmistakable characters--Mr. Ferguson, the violin-playing Mrs. Rittenhouse, curmudgeons with their crazed dogs and unruly profusion of cats--Booth combines warmth, energy, quirkiness, and amazing detail. Like another famous Missourian, Mark Twain, Booth has never lost that flavor of small-town eccentricity--or the laugh-out-loud humor that defines his work.

Beloved cartoonist George Booth has spent over four decades at The New Yorker constructing auniverse so distinct and detailedit would be immediately identifiable even withouthis signature at the bottom of the panel. Known for cartoons of twitching dogs situated alongside a long-suffering couple, this collection will highlight Booth's best and funniest dog cartoons ina small, hardcover format.

Cartoonists are finally getting their due. Compiled and edited by Lee Lorenz, former art editor of The New Yorker and an acclaimed cartoonist in his own right, The Essential Cartoonists library is a celebration of this unique visual art form. Each volume focuses on one truly outstanding artist and features approximately 150 of the artist's best cartoons, as well as insight into background, influences, inspirations, working habits, and more. Launching the series: The Essential George Booth and The Essential Charles Barsotti. Charles Barsotti is also a 30-year veteran of The New Yorker, and in Barsotti Lorenz presents an overview of this signature cartoonist whose rounded, elegant, sparsely detailed style evokes both the traditional world of a Thurber and the contemporary sensibility of a Roz Chast. With his simple repertory--including a nameless but lovable pooch and a monarch whose kingdom consists of a guard and a telephone--Barsotti manages to miraculously dissipate the clouds in people's minds with his unexpected humor.

Jack Ziegler is a pivotal figure in the history of contemporary cartooning. An artist who redefined what a gag cartoon can be, he blends the conventions of a comic strip with the traditional format of a one-panel captioned cartoon, giving readers of The New Yorker some of their funniest moments for nearly 30 years. And though his self-stated ambition is modest-"just wanting to be funny"-his editors over the years praise him as a genius with a "touch of madness." (Balancing that is the opinion, shared by the artist himself, of friend and fellow cartoonist Bill Woodman: "Oh, Jack-he's just nuts, that's all.") Third in The Essential Cartoonists Library is The Essential Jack Ziegler, joining The Essential George Booth and The Essential Charles Barsotti in respectfully celebrating this unique visual form and its great artists. Compiled and edited by Lee Lorenz, former art editor of The New Yorker, it presents approximately 150 of the artist's best cartoons, as well as photographs, insight into his background, influences, inspirations, working habits, and the appreciations of fellow cartoonists, including Roz Chast, Mick Stevens, and Bob Mankoff.A sharp social satirist whose work sneaks up on you, Ziegler offers a deadpan yet bemused portrait of middle America. Everything appears normal-yet of course it's not. Television comes in by pipeline. "Say, this isn't so bad," comes a thought bubble from under a grave. And two dogs suspiciously eye a cat calendar. No idea is too far-fetched, too silly, too pointed-and suddenly you're laughing out loud.

An award-winning journalist tells you everything you need to know about being Jewish in this user-friendly guide that explains not only what Jews do and believe, but why.

The egotism that fuels the desire for greatness has been associated exclusively with men, according to one feminist view; yet many women cannot suppress the need to strive for greatness. In this forceful and compelling book, Alison Booth traces through the novels, essays, and other writings of George Eliot and Virginia Woolf radically conflicting attitudes on the part of each toward the possibility of feminine greatness. Examining the achievements of Eliot and Woolf in their social contexts, she provides a challenging model of feminist historical criticism.