A rollicking tribute to comedy’s restless genius.
Davis takes readers through a century of comedy, showing how changing technologies, unforgiving audiences, and unexpected setbacks shaped some of entertainment’s most inventive performers. Comedy has never been a forgiving profession. Audiences heckle, executives interfere, and jokes fall flat. Davis follows comedians from vaudeville’s ruthless crowds to the internet’s algorithm-driven stages, exploring how each new medium demanded fresh skills and sharper instincts.
The liveliest passages concern performers who turned disaster into opportunity. Jack Benny transformed a disastrous violin performance into a comic breakthrough; the Marx Brothers discovered that insulting their audience got bigger laughs than singing. Davis is especially good on radio’s reliance on timing and television’s power to turn a facial expression into a punchline. His accounts of Second City and Saturday Night Live show how much great comedy owes to talented people working together. Personal recollections lend warmth, while stories of unlikely breakthroughs reveal the persistence behind seemingly effortless performances. His closing examination of artificial intelligence poses a provocative question: If technology can improve a joke, can it teach someone to be funny?
A perceptive, richly entertaining portrait of comedy as an art of survival.
***
Pub date October 9, 2026
ASIN B0HHJ86TLM
Price $14.99 Paperback, $6.99 Kindle edition
