Rating: 
Summary: Seriously Enjoyable
Review: This book brings together more information about more comedians than any other book I've ever read.It is a collection of biographies, not a comprehensive history of the 50s and 60s. Even so, the 50s and 60s came alive for me as I encountered in quick succession Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Steve Allen, Bob Newhart, Woody Allen, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and a score of other comedians who hit it big during that time. Thank you, Gerald Nachman, for several evenings of great reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Mile Wide, Inch Deep
Review: This book provides a chapter each on comedians such as Mort Sahl, Tom Lehrer, Jean Shepherd, and many others from the 1950's and 1960's. It appeals of to those of us who are nostalgic for those comedians and that time period. Author Gerald Nachman has authoritative knowledge backed by extensive research. Most of the comedians covered by his book are in their 70's and 80's, and he has interviewed many of them. For the most part, he avoids over-analyzing comedy or lapsing into pompous amateur sociology. Overall, however, I find the book to be a mile wide and an inch deep. It's very time-consuming to plow through the whole thing. In the end, I did not come away feeling that I knew much more about Mort Sahl or Jean Shepherd than I did from reading the record jacket of "The Future Lies Ahead" or the book flap of "In God we Trust, All others Pay Cash." I wish that Nachman had a better editor. At a detail level, the inconsistency of dates is a constant source of annoyance. I felt like someone could be 40 years old one year, and 47 years old ten years later. On a larger level, I would have shortened the book by trimming some of the name-linking and uninformative quotations. Instead, I would have appreciated some bullet-point style presentations that encapsulated timelines, career highlights, and best available recordings. This could have been a better book.
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