Horizon Information Portal

e-branch

Home

My Account/Renew Loans

Find Magazine Articles & more

Item Information

The comedians : drunks, thieves, scoundrels, and the history of American comedy / Kliph Nesteroff.

by Nesteroff, Kliph.

View full image

Grove Press, [2015]

Comedy -- History and criticism.

Vaudeville -- History and criticism.

Stand-up comedy -- United States -- History.

Comedians -- United States -- Biography.

American wit and humor -- History and criticism.

9780802123985 (hc.)

0802123988 (hc.)

xvii, 425 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [363]-393) and index.

Vaudeville comedians -- Radio -- Nightclubs -- Television -- Late night -- The emergence of Las Vegas -- Stand-up's great change -- Percolation in the mid-1960s -- Hippie madness at decade's end -- The first comedy clubs and the 1970s -- The stand-up comedy boom -- The 1990s -- The new mellennium.

"Comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. 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, Nesteroff 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 book culminates with a look at the new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century"--Provided by publisher.

Horizon Information Portal 3.24_8902M

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal