Wry Harvest: An Anthology of Midwest Humor

If you live in the Midwest, you have to know how to laugh. Tornados, floods, drought, and miles and miles of flat land: if you don't have a sense of humor, you might want to consider living somewhere else. Humor is as natural to the Midwest as cow pats and corn mazes, seed caps and road kill, Johnny Carson and David Letterman.

This book gathers some of the best stories from the humorists of the big belly of America, past and present. Here are Mark Twain, George Ade, Finley Peter Dunne, Don Marquis, and Ring Lardner; James Thurber, Ruth McKenney, Erma Bombeck, Calvin Trillin, and Garrison Keillor--Midwesterners, one and all. There's even a piece from William Dean Howells, not usually known for his knock-me-down humor. You'll also find tales from Ambrose Bierce, Kin Hubbard, Sinclair Lewis, Mike Royko, Donald Kaul, P. J. O'Rourke, and Bill Bryson.

Here is a book to curl up with when the cows don't come home, the crick's flooded, and the fox has bedded down in the henhouse. It'll put a smile on your face and make you glad you don't live in New York City, even if you do.

Author: Chris Lamb
Publisher: Quarry Books
Published: 09/21/2006
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.86lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.58w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780253218728

About the Author

Chris Lamb is Associate Professor of Communication at the College of Charleston. He is author of Blackout: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training and Drawn to Extremes: The Limits of Editorial Cartoons in the United States (forthcoming). He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.