American Cornball is Christopher Miller's irresistibly funny illustrated survey of popular humor -- the topics that used to make us laugh, from hiccups and henpecked-husbands to outhouses and old maids -- and what it tells us about our country yesterday and today.

Miller revisits nearly 200 comic staples that have been passed down through our culture for generations, many originating from the vaudeville age. He explores the (often unseemly) contexts from which they arose, why they were funny in their time, and why they eventually lost their appeal. The result is a kind of taxonomy of humor during America's golden age that provides a deeper, more profound look at the prejudices, preoccupations, and peculiarities of a nation polarized between urban and rural, black and white, highborn and lowbrow.

As he touches on issues of racism and sexism, cultural stereotypes and violence, Miller reveals how dramatically our moral sensibilities have shifted, most notably in the last few decades. Complete with more than 100 period illustrations, American Cornball is a richly entertaining survey of our shifting comic universe.

• We started tracking this book on July 7, 2014.
• This book was $18.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 104 times in the past 3,878 days.
• The current price of this book is $1.99 last checked 16 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $0.75.
• The lowest price to date was $0.75 last reached on September 20, 2024.
• This book has been $0.75 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $18.99 last reached on October 27, 2015.
• This book has been $18.99 2 times since we started tracking it.

• Publication Date: September 23, 2014
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 547 Pages
• File Size: 104,231 KB