ChrisLindsay9
MuscleHead
- Jun 17, 2013
- 2,773
- 1,144
This was a good book. Very in-depth history of (mostly) stand-up comedy in the U.S. A lot of anecdotes and interesting tidbits about specific comedy personalities from the Vaudeville days to contemporary times.
Probably the most interesting bit of information to me was how connected the mob was to early comedy. It started around Prohibition when the mob was owning/running Vaudeville houses and nightclubs. But it continued all the way up to the 50s-60s when Vegas supported a comedy industry. If there was a comedian that prospered at anytime on stage, movies, radio, or TV between the '20s and the '60s, they most likely got a lot of support at various times in his or her career from the mob. It's a pretty big book, but it's one of those books, you could just flip around to certain time periods and just start reading. Although the Vaudeville stuff was more interesting than I thought it'd be, the era when TV was starting was probably my favorite part of the book.
My book for next month's bookclub is "Act of Grace" by Karen Simpson. I haven't started it yet, but one of my fellow bookclub members has already started and told me it's "really, really different." And that I'd probably hate it. We'll see.
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