Purchase

Amazon

Powell's Books

Add to Wish List

Also by Stephen Hess:

What Do We Do Now?, November 2008
Paperback
Drawn and Quartered, September 1996
Hardcover

Drawn and Quartered
Stephen Hess

The History of American Political Cartoons

Black Lizard Books
September 1996
168 pages
ISBN: 1880216396
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Non-Fiction | Historical

It's hard to imagine a book on this topic that's better than Drawn and Quartered. Authors Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop have created a history that is lucid, authoritative, and fun. The profuse illustrations are, as one would expect, varied and entertaining. Even better, the cartoons featured do an excellent job of demonstrating the evolution of political cartooning from Ben Franklin (America's first editorial cartoonist) to the present.

Hess and Northrop do an excellent job of relating cartoons to the political and social climate in which they were created. For example, "Caricatures of [Martin Luther] King, Malcolm X, and the other African American leaders who rose to prominence [in the 1950s and 1960s] are hard to find. Cartoonists and their newspapers grew so sensitive to the volatility of caricaturing black leaders, fearing that they would be perceived as racial slurs.... Instead, cartoonists employed generic situations and peopled them with generic black figures. Martin Luther King Jr. became an invisible man in the cartoons of the [era]."

Readers casually interested in the topic will find Drawn and Quartered an entertaining and unique book. Aficionados will be satisfied with the book's sagacity and depth, and may even discover illustrators that they did not know. All will agree that Hess and Northrop deserve a round of applause. --Michael Gerber

Comments

No comments posted.

Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!