Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly shallow
Review: My public library had a wondrous New Yorker cartoon collection in the 1980s. Each page was enjoyable, and there were gems throughout. Thanks to Mr. Mankoff's editorial decisions, my respect for the clever, observant, and hilarious world of New Yorker cartoons is gone. It was sad to trudge through this new collection and put it down after page 121. I only laughed 4 times, and didn't have the energy to process yet another wordy attempt at humor by Roz Chast.I kept hoping for some sign of sharpness and talent to appear. The unchronological mish-mash of styles and topics was jarring, as the 1950s office/domestic arena of humor simply does not mesh with the 1970s and 1990s focus on puncturing pretension. The reader is forced to repeatedly cross the line between innocent nostalgia and excruciating staleness. The book's extremely poor printing of Chas. Addams' work was puzzling. The tiresome, annoying, and intentionally unreadable introduction gave the answer; All the artwork was digitized in the hope of improving quality. The freshness and impact of hand-drawn lines and brushed tones is best translated through photographic line-art and halftone processes. Vitality is lost with present day digital techniques.
Rating: 
Summary: Author's Introduction to New Yorker cartoon collection
Review: Now me, you couldn't pay me to read an introduction to a cartoon book. I'd jump straight to the cartoons. You could, however, pay me to write one. Even so, I'm still tempted to stop writing and jump ahead. More than tempted actually. I'll be back in a minute; wait right here... Okay I'm back now, ready to blurb my brains out. Incidentally, pretesting of this book has shown that 24 percent of you joined me in that first excursion and never returned to this introduction. Frankly, I wish I could do likewise, especially if you're looking at Peter Arno's most popular cartoon, on page 43 (66.2 percent of you are now gone for good), Charles Barsotti's funniest, on page 50 (72.85 percent), or anything by George Booth (it's up to 85.96 percent now). I'm not even going to mention Roz Chast. By not even mentioning her, I know I lost another 14 percent. For the .0313 percent of you who are still left, some background. As cartoon editor of The New Yorker I help select great cartoons from great cartoonists for a great publication, which has produced the greatest magazine cartooning of the century. Isn't that just great? In addition to being Cartoon Editor, I'm also a cartoonist myself. I go by the pen name of Mankoff, which unfortunately for me is the same as my real name. Rumor has it that media watchdogs are on the verge of putting two and two together and charging me with conflict of interest. In a move sure to trigger new investigations, I got to choose cartoons from the entire seventy-five-year history of The New Yorker, to create a collection of the crème de la crème of the crème de la crème. As divine payback for this outrageous good fortune, I'm sure there's a bullet with my name on it somewhere, or maybe just a tainted container of crème de la crème. There are seven hundred and seven cartoons in this book, the most in any New Yorker collection ever. And, all along, the idea was to make this collection the best. But how could I be sure of that when the inclusion of seven hundred and seven cartoons meant the exclusion of more than sixty thousand others? Well, to start with, I reviewed all The New Yorker's cartoons ? close to sixty-one thousand of them. How? With the help of powerful computers that were not only Y2K compliant but obsequious as well. I then tentatively divided the cartoons into groups: "Tentatively Yes," "Tentatively No," and "Tentatively Maybe." At this point I realized I was being too tentative and needed some help and guidance in the selection process. And I got it. First, from my fellow-cartoonists. I asked them what they thought were their best cartoons. They weren't shy about telling me, and they weren't shy about threatening me. Many of their recommendations have been included. Then I asked a number of The New Yorker's senior editors to search their memories for their favorites Then I asked them to do it again when they came up with the wrong favorites. Finally, I asked for suggestions from a source that has never before been used in compiling a New Yorker cartoon album: you the reader?or you the surfer, the thirty thousand of you who have registered at The New Yorker's cartoon site. Literally hundreds of your choices have been included in this book, and frankly, if you don't like them you have no one to blame but yourselves. There's nothing else to say. Which is just as well, because at this point there's probably no one left to say it to. For anybody who still happens to be reading this, enjoy the cartoons and I'll see you later in the Artists' Index under Mankoff. Bob Mankoff, New York, 1999
Rating: 
Summary: The New Yorker 75th Anniversary Cartoon Collection
Review: Since we already own several anthologies of New Yorker cartoons, and have always subscribed to the New Yorker I really didn't anticipate that I would find anything really "new" in this collection. I was, however, rather surprised when looking through the book after I gave it to my son as a hanukah gift at the selection of cartoons. Mankoff has come up with a timeless collection--one that shows us that real humor crosses over decades and generations. How he managed to choose these cartoons, I do not know, but I imagine he had to go through thousands and thousands of cartoons, and make thousands of decisions that no cartoonist or cartoon lover would want to have to make. The newer cartoons (those by Roz Chast and her contemporaries) are destined to be classics. I am so glad that we bought it.
Rating:
Summary: The New Yorker 75th Anniversary Cartoon Collection
Review: Since we already own several anthologies of New Yorker cartoons, and have always subscribed to the New Yorker I really didn't anticipate that I would find anything really "new" in this collection. I was, however, rather surprised when looking through the book after I gave it to my son as a hanukah gift at the selection of cartoons. Mankoff has come up with a timeless collection--one that shows us that real humor crosses over decades and generations. How he managed to choose these cartoons, I do not know, but I imagine he had to go through thousands and thousands of cartoons, and make thousands of decisions that no cartoonist or cartoon lover would want to have to make. The newer cartoons (those by Roz Chast and her contemporaries) are destined to be classics. I am so glad that we bought it.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic Humor
Review: While I would agree that The New Yorker cartoons in this book could have been better organized and that the introduction was inconsequential, there are many classic cartoons in this volume that are well worth the price of admission. In my collegiate youth, I lived for my weekly New Yorker, just to read the cartoons. I found many old friends in this book and was grateful to be reaquainted with them.
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