Both a very interesting history of the continuum of comedians and a sequences of interesting individual stories.
I managed to pick up an advanced reading copy of this book and I'm glad that I did - it's fascinating. The book is a review of how present day stand-up began in New York City in the 1970s with people like David Steinberg, Robert Klein, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin.
I was hoping for a book that analyzed comedy or the impact of comedy on life in US. Instead, I found a book of biography - details of the lives of several famous US comedians.
This is more trivia than a review...In the photos section they supposedly have a photo of "Steve Martin.
Although "Comedy at the Edge" is well researched for the most part, author Richard Zoglin does make some startling omissions in this attempt at chronicling stand-up comedy in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. How could he fail to mention such luminaries as Cheech & Chong, while devoting numerous pages to little-known lackeys of the omnipresent Mitzi Shore?
And in the US, the 70's was the start of the modern era of comedy. The post war guys were reacting to Vietnam, Watergate, Civil Rights and reacting against the vaudeville era Henny Youngman stuff.
A successor-in-interest to Gerald Nachman's Seriously Funny (duly listed among the sources), this book is neither as well-written nor as factually error-ridden as that work. Richard Zoglin attempts to do for comedy of the '70s what Nachman did for the '50s and '60s.
A smart, thoughtful and wildly funny (how could it not be?) book about the stand-up comedians who changed the nature of comedy.
I bought this book because I was excited to read new stories about the rise of comedy in the 1970s. While it is a good read for that alone, it wasn't for me because I had heard a good portion of the stories in it before, including the famous writer's strike of 1979 (which I had read in a biography about Jerry Seinfeld).
This is a fabulous book and well researched! Interesting to learn about some of my favorite comic's pasts.
Ever noticed that there isn't a single book on George Carlin? Well, now there's a gloriously well written chapter detailing Carlin's rise to popularity and influence.
This book is a wonderful overview of the emergence of modern comedy and the role many of today's leading comics had in its emergence. The author does a wonderful job how pioneers such as Lenny Bruce paid an enormous price to make observational and topical humor of as much relevance as the one liners that were common place before hand.
Just go ahead and buy this book, you won't be disappointed. Zoglin writes well and you keep learning new things about stand-up comics you thought you knew and how the business has been changing.
I loved the portion of this book dealing with the funniest man ever, Albert Brooks. I realized that I didn't know a lot about him ( i've just watched all of his films dozens of times ).
Who are the people who made us laugh in the last 30 years? That's what author Richard Zoglin examines in this absorbing history of comedy BS (before Seinfeld..
