Amazon.com
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
From Publishers Weekly
Although this book does not claim to be exhaustive, it offers an entertaining and enlightening survey of American political cartoons, illustrated by 269 examples from colonial times to the present. In their introduction, Hess (The Ungentlemanly Art of Political Cartooning) and Northrop, a PBS writer/producer, remind us of the political cartoon's role, from Thomas Nast's attacks on Tammany Hall to David Levine's memorable image of Lyndon Johnson pointing to a gallbladder-operation scar shaped like Vietnam. The authors proceed chronologically, explaining how Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty and John Q. Public entered national iconography, and they show how contemporary cartoonists reinterpret older images?as when Paul Conrad's tattooed Ronald Reagan borrowed from an 1884 Puck image. While the authors do not neglect underappreciated cartoonists like the groundbreaking African American Oliver Harrington, they cover all the recent greats; WWII imageer Bill Mauldin; Washington fixture Herblock; inner monologuist Jules Feiffer; Pat Oliphant, who uses an alter ego penguin commentator. The authors note that the rise of CNN and attendant American consciousness has allowed cartoonists to broaden their vision and comment more often on world events; still, as they lament, the rise of syndicates and the decreasing number of newspapers have shrunk the market for cartoonists. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Midwest Book Review
>From Benjamin Franklin's drawing of the first American political cartoon in 1754 to Herblock's blistering attacks on the democratic process today, editorial cartoons have been a mainstay of American journalism and politics. Drawn & Quartered chronicles the nation's highs and lows in an extensive collection of cartoons that span the entire history of American political cartooning. Cartoonists capture our imagination with charecters and symbols that speak at once to our heads, hearts, and senses of humor. Through skillful juxtaposition of pictures and words, cartoonists galvanize public opinion for or against their subjects. In the process they have revealed truths about ourselves and our democratic system that have been both embarrassing and ennobling. Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop note that not all cartoonists have worn white hats. Many have perpetuated demeaning ethnic stereotypes, slandered honest politicians, and oversimplified complex issues. Nonetheless, most cartoonists pride themselves on attacking honestly -- if ruthlessly. Drawn & Quartered demonstrates and documents the cartoonists' ability to capture the essence of key moments and political cartoons that have shaped American history. Drawn & Quartered is wonderful recreational reading in its own right, and a necessary, serious study for anyone with an interest in American political history.
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