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This collection has 36 stories including: "The Gentleman is Cold," "Everything is Wild," "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife," "Hell Only Breaks Loose Once," "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," and "How toSee a Bad Play."

The London Times said, "There may be greater humorists writing in America today than James Thurber, but none with quite his individual touch and his flavor." ... Read more

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The Thurber Collection deals with pieces on the authors family, friends, teachers, and colleagues in Columbus, Ohio, in the good old days of carriages and tranquillity. Most of the stories first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A view from a non-fan
Since the only other review of this book is by a professed Thurber fan, I thought I, who had been relatively unaware of Thurber's work before reading this book, could write a helpful review.It is basically a series of portraits of people that were either important in Thurber's family history, important in Columbus, Ohio from the 1910's to the 1930's, or his journalist friends from Columbus.Thurber had a subtle sense of humor, and he uses it to full effect in describing the sometimes outrageous activities of his subjects.The anecdotal history of Columbus that is slowly revealed proved to be quite interesting (I'm a native of central Ohio).
Each chapter did end on what at first seemed to be an overly sappy note; however, this is understandable since the book was first published in the early 1950's, when such things were probably expected by Thurber's audience.Overall, this was a very fun read.

excellent stories about people in thrubers life
I am a big thurber fan amd i found this one of his best works.He writes about his relatives and people who were special to him in his life.The characterizations are excellent and I highly recommend this book to anythurber fan.I read in his biography that some of his family members werenot flattered with the book, but I can not see why. ... Read more

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The Fireside Book of Dog Stories is destined, the publishers believe, to become the top dog in its field. As may be seen by the Table of Contents, it is a Great Dane among anthologies, containing 608 pages, two complete novels, thirty-three short stories and articles, and several novelettes.

It contains gay stories and sad ones, philosophical ones and shamelessly sentimental ones. There are stories about mastiffs and bull terriers, pointers and poodles, Airedales and just plain mutts. For people who feel pretty seriously about dogs there are pieces such as "The Character of Dogs," by Robert Louis Stevenson and "Dandy, The Story of a Dog," by W. H. Hudson. For those who want to get something of a behind-the-scenes line on the way dogs think, there are stories such as "My Talks with Dean Spanley," by Lord Dunsany, "On Being a Public Character," by Don Marquis, and "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog," by O. Henry.

Those interested in canine heroes will find "The Bar Sinister," by Richard Harding Davis, "Lassie Come-Home," by Eric Knight, and "Garm-a Hostage," by Rudyard Kipling. Those particularly concerned with the relationships of small boys and dogs will do well to read "Blue Milk," by Booth Tarkington and "The Odyssey of Runyon Jones," by Norman Cornwin. And those who will remember to keep a handkerchief handy while reading may turn to "A Dark Brown Dog," by Stephen Crane and "A Pair of Lovers," by Elsie Singmaster Lewars.

In his introduction to The Fireside Book of Dog Stories, James Thurber writes: "The dog has got more fun out of man than man has got out of the dog for the clearly demonstrable reason that man is the more laughable of the two animals." This book is an attempt to remedy this injustice. The reader need bring only one thing to it—an attachment to dogs, by leashes or other ties. For it contains every conceivable kind of dog story, from the kind that cause spontaneous laughter to the kind that cause sniffling. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

an excellent variety of classic dog stories
Classic and timeless stories and lore for the dog lovers of the world.For a few dollars, this wonderful old treasure can give you a world of enjoyment.My particular favorite (and it is indeed priceless!) is Lord Dunsany's "My Talks with Dean Spanley"... it is indeed hilarious!This is a book that should be passed down from generation to generation.

Times change the Heart of a Dog never does.
this book is a collection of stories of owners and dogs. Some are written during the world war two era. This book is filled with wonderful stories,heart wrenching, witty, funny and true. Some of famous people and their beloved pet. Hunting dogs,family pets, wise and wonderful. This is truly a curl up and enjoy collection of stories. This book was printed before the invention of dog food.. when people and pets may have had a much different relationship to each other..but then maybe not. If you love a dog ,you will truly enjoy ,hate and love this book. ... Read more

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One of the greatest American humorists of our century, Thurber was not a man to shrink from danger--as long as he was safely ensconced behind his typewriter or drawing board. Here is a collection of ruminations on everyday villainy--stories, articles and drawings on the evil that men and women do. 32 line drawings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Ok, if a Little Dated...
I'm a fan of the whole "New Yorker" vibe. James Thurber is a classic golden age New Yorker writer- he did articles, stories AND cartoons! Versatile. Thurber on Crime is just what it says- a collection of (very) short fiction, factual articles about police dogs (four different articles) and his cartoons. At 200 pages, it's a fast, fast read. I skimmed several of the stories near the end- the "childrens book as film noir" story was particularly painful and dated.

Macbeth Murder Mystery makes the whole thing worthwhile
James Thurber, best remembered today as the creator of Walter Mitty, is one of the group of staffwriters who earned The New Yorker its reputation as the "greatest magazine in the world, perhaps thebest that ever was," as the old commercial used to inform us.There were several different types ofwriters in that group, the infamously long essays were turned out by folks like Joseph Mitchell andBerton Roueche (my two favorites), while shorter pieces, drawings, poems, etc., were the province ofThurber, Robert Benchley, E. B. White and several other polymaths.Considering the range of hisduties, that he was writing for a weekly magazine, and the length of his career (the pieces in thiscollection span a period from 1929 to 1961), you could probably fill numerous volumes withThurber's work and indeed there are plenty of collections of his varied output available, manypublished during his life but many others posthumous.

Though he would not be considered a crime writer, this book happens to be organized around the topicof crime, and that serves to give it a thematic coherence that a random anthology would lack. Included are drawings, stories, and articles that cover a whole range of topics, fiction and nonfiction.Plenty of folks only look at the cartoons in The New Yorker, and if you enjoy that style of humor,you'll enjoy Thurber's drawings.His artwork borders on the amateurish--and since he eventually wentblind, it got worse as he went along--but it's certainly distinctive.

Most all of the stories are written with the wry wit for which Thurber was best known--in hisIntroduction, Donald E. Westlake calls it "gentle comedy."There's an especially good true tale aboutan employee who stole tens of thousands of dollars from Harold Ross, the magazine's publisher, beforebeing caught.Though ostensibly an attempt to understand the thief, who ended up committingsuicide, Thurber turns it into an opportunity to poke fun at Ross.

But far and away the best thing in the book, and one of the best stories I've ever read, is "The MacbethMurder Mystery."An American woman visiting an English hotel accidentally grabs The Tragedy ofMacbeth instead of one of the cheap mysteries she intended.Undaunted, she simply reads the play as awhodunit, and to the narrator's astonishment, decides that the Macbeths are not guilty.Herexplanations, full of perfectly rational references to the traditions and conventions of the detectivegenre, eventually ensnare the narrator and the reader, and when, by the end of the story, he's offeredhis own solution to the mystery and is ready to take on Hamlet, we too are carried away by thedemented logic of the tale.

The book's worth reading for that story alone; the rest is gravy.

GRADE : B+ ... Read more

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Book description to come. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

More delights from Thurber's crazy world
The Thurber Carnival is really the must-have offering from the Thurber canon, but this book has some delights of its own. His assessment of the psychology behind his cartoons for The New Yorker is typical Thurber, the man at his sharpest. His gallery of wildlife sketches is as believable as it is ridiculous (his portrait of a gloat standing by a patch of I-told-you-sos beingjust one example).

Decent but not his best
Let me start by saying that James Thurber is an exeptional writer and most of his stuff is well writen and very readable. However this book while it contains some very good works is not his best work ever. The thing that really drew me to this book was the cover and title and I am glad I read it and did enjoy it, but I have enjoyed some of his other works more. ... Read more

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The WISP series (short for Wonderfully Illustrated Short Pieces) represents an ingenious marriage of two creative forces: the artistry of today's foremost children's book illustrators and the literary legacy of beloved authors of popular short works for adults. The resulting offspring of this union are captivating, full-color illustrated editions of timeless classics that readers will want to savor and collect.

Customer Reviews (4)

Secret Lives of Walter Mitty and James thurber
Combining the life of James Thurber along with one of his most famous characters was a stroke of genius.Combine that with the wonderful illustrations and you have a winner.

The secret life of Walter Middy
This was aneat book of a man who found life in his own world and only came back to his real world when he had to. I found it quite humorous.He sees altered perceptions in people ,places and things.

Thurber Rocks!
A Walter lurks within all of else.It's escapism at its best!It's still GREAT after all these years.

A Longstanding Pair
Thurber and Simont were friends and neighbors in West Cornwall, Connecticut, when Simont was a young man.After Thurber lost his own eyesight, Simont illustrated such works of Thurber's as "The Thirteen Clocks" and "The Wonderful O".Recently, Simont provided new illustrations for a new edition of "Many Moons", the first illustrations of which had earned Louis Slobodkin a Caldecott Award.Simont, a native speaker and teacher of the Catalan language, won the Caldecott Award for "A Tree is Nice", in 1957. ... Read more

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Rivals for Power is a lively and up to date description of the power struggle between the president and Congress. In it, leading congressional and presidential scholars and knowledgeable former public officials consider the historical, political, and constitutional foundations of conflict between the two branches. The authors give practical advice about how to build cooperative policymaking between the president and Congress as they struggle over major crises in solving economic problems and addressing domestic issues and the challenges in defense and foreign policy making. The book features original academic research and practitioner knowledge from the White House and the Hill. This fourth edition includes all new essays with unique and critical viewpoints on the role of the president and Congress in the policy making process. Many of the essays focus on lessons learned about cooperation and conflict between the two branches from the Clinton and Bush presidencies. The essays include preliminary analyses of President Barack ObamaOs relationship with Congress. Because the authors have made major contributions as congressional and presidential scholars, and have played key roles in Congress, in the White House, in the media, as lobbyists, each chapter presents a different perspective. This new edition of Rivals for Power is intended for students, scholars, public officials, the media and the general public. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good collection of essays on U.S. president
Rivals for Power is an interesting collection of essays edited by James Thurber with the intent of exploring what the roots of rivalry between the president and Congress are.The chapters in the book present original research organized around several themes and written from a variety of perspectives.Political scientists, legal scholars, historians, journalists, former White House and Capitol Hill staff, and former members of Congress all contribute.

The essays are quite appropriate and do a great job in helping to improve the understanding of presidential-congressional relations by combining firsthand experiences with academic analyses.This book is recommended to all interested in the U.S. presidency, especially as it relates to Congress.

excellent scientific overview of government relations
James Thurber's "Rivals For Power" is a collection of excellent essays concerning topics found in the relationship between the United States' Congress and office of the Presidency.The text is filled with substantial hypothesis' of the causes of potential relations and uses easy-to-understand scientific methods to illustrate these theories.A must read for any student of American Politics.

Excellent Undergraduate Text
Highly recommend for classroom reading on complex relationship betweenCongress and President. A must for political science students. ... Read more

Product Description
Critical reviews of Harrison Kinney's epic look at the life and times of humorist James Thurber say it all. "Knowing that Thurber's readers need to be drawn into the process through which he reshaped his adventure of life, Kinney enables us to experience it."John McAleer, CHICAGO TRIBUNE. "Virtually without a dull page . . . The combination of the simple and the complex that makes Thurber so difficult to analyze also makes him a fascinating figure to read about."Robert Taylor, THE BOSTON GLOBE. Includes two 16-page photo inserts.Amazon.com Review
"James Grover Thurber," writes Harrison Kinney,"is considered the preeminent American humorist of the twentiethcentury by those who keep score in grand matters of thiskind.... My Life andHard Times raised the bar of comic literary reminiscence to aheight that no other practitioner of the genre has come close toclearing."

This biography of Thurber is practically a lifelong project forKinney, who first wrote about the humorist for a Columbia master'sthesis in the late 1940s and contracted to write this book in 1962. Itweighs in at well over 1,000 pages, due primarily to the amount ofbackground the biographer provides. The discussion of Thurber's yearsat The New Yorker, for example, which takes up much of the finaltwo-thirds of the book, is preceded by a 16-page history of HaroldRoss's stewardship of the magazine before Thurber's arrival. But anycharges of excessiveness are easily brushed aside by the steady paradeof hilarious anecdotes, the numerous quotes from Thurber's own worksand correspondence, as well as reproductions of the classic Thurbercartoons, including "All Right, Have It Your Way--You Heard aSeal Bark!" which Robert Benchley called "the funniestcartoon caption the magazine had ever run." This cornucopia ofbiographic material also provides rich insight into the ways in whichThurber transmuted his personal experiences into lasting art of thehighest order. This is a book not to be missed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

those thousand page biographies
The amount of time and work Kinney put into this is amazing, and deeply appreciated by the fans of Thurber. The most insightful portions of the book seem to be the letters Kinney so carefully excerpted, particularly the ones Thurber addressed to his daughter Rosemary. Kinney successfully links the letters' content to particular Thurber cartoons or essays. The titles are whimsical, too, befitting the subject:"Those Clocks of Columbus", "Those Violets in the Snow",phrases culled from some of Thurber's essays.My only complaint is the lack of critical commentary on Thurber's writing; Kinney sometimes has a sentence here or there from some distinguished writer/critic, but I'd like to see an appendix with a variety of takes on the Thurberian canon.And...Kinney seems just a wee bit reverent about Thurber, a little more so than I like in a biography.I'm also crazy about "Jamie", but I expect a little less awe from a scholar. However, I'm nitpicking.I've enjoyed the book so much that I always take it with me and read it on my way to Columbus, Ohio, when I attend the literary picnics at Thurber House. (Before you think I drive like Thurber, let me assure you my husband drives--and we live 50 miles away, so I have an hour to read.)Rereading portions of the biography always makes a festive time even better.

AMust-Have Book for All Thurber Fans and Scholars!
Mr Kinney has given the world (and us fellow"Thurberphiles") a much needed comprehensive critical biography of America's premire 20th century humorist, author, and artist--James Grover Thurber. Mr Kinney'swork is well researched and represents over 30 years of painstaking effort,culminating in a plethora of priceless insights and background detailsconcerning this great American author and artist. As an avid (but amateur)Thurber historian and fan, I found the book to fill a much needed space onthe shelf of American literary history. Mr Kinney traces Thurber's life,through his early years in Columbus, OH, and later, New York and abroad. Heprovides historical insight into the early "JT" years at the NEWYORKER staff, and supports his writing with many primary source interviews,papers, photos, letters, etc... While I would have preferred to have seenthe use of footnotes and better documentation of sources, the book is stillimpressive all the same (i.e., he quotes letters and documents but fails toindicate which library/university/private collection, etc., they comefrom).This book is a "must" for all literary historians andThurber fans as it provides the best to-date historic timeline and detailedexplanation of Thurber, the man: his loves, hates, successes, and failures.To be honest, there are several places where the sheer volume of detailsand correspondance could overwhelm the novice (despite the book's smoothreadability, you will not finish its 1,105 pages over a weekend!).But MrKinney should also be praised for his habit of providing a brief outline ofeach Thurber piece discussed. This serves to assist those readers who maynot be throughly familiar with Mr Thurber's works. In addition, hisBiographical Update at the end, is an excellent vehicle for tying up thehistorical and biographical "loose ends" with a "where arethey now?" approach.Despite the impressive research however, I didfind two very minor inaccuracies: the first one on page 291, where MrKinney (referring to Thurber's "Remembrances of Things Past")describes Thurber getting French chickens drunk on bread soaked with"bad wine". In actuality, "Calvados" is not wine, but abrandy made from fermented apples, particular to the Normandy province ofFrance. Also, on page 900, Mr Kinney infers that there was only one Thurbercartoon that depicted a man at a typewriter. This statement is confusingsince I've found four Thurber drawings that depict men at typewriters, inaddition to the one he is talking about (captioned: "He's givingDorothy Thompson a piece of his mind"). Despite these minor flaws, MrKinney's book is most welcome and should serve for many years as a"one-stop" springboard for others interested in delving intoJames Thurber's life and influence on American culture. Bravo! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

A complete look at a complete life
James Thurber is my favorite American humorist, and "Remember Laughter" paints a complete picture of this very complex individual.I'm impressed that it's not just a cheerlead for Thurber--the book celebrates his accomplishments without explaining away or excusing his frustrations and dark, alcoholic side.Any fan of Thurber or student of American literature needs to read this.Well done, Mr. Grauer.

FINE BIO OF A COMIC GENIUS
American humorist James Thurber (1894 - 1961) brought us Walter Mitty, and now freelance journalist Neil Grauer brings us James Thurber in all his comic and caustic complexity.

A native of Ohio and graduate of Ohio State University, Thurber began as a code clerk in the Department of State.After working as a journalist in Paris, he began a life-long association with New Yorker magazine, whose pages were brightened with Thurber's short stories and classic cartoons in which his misanthropy is often present as animals ape the behavior of humans and vice vera.

Always aware of the frailties and pratfalls of human beings as they faced life's predicaments, Thurber penned among others, "The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze" and "The Thurber Carnival."In 1940 he joined Eliot Nugent to write a drama of college life, "The Male Animal," which, along with other Thurber works, was made into a motion picture.

This funny man's last years were relentlessly bleak.Unable to cope with the loss of his sight, Thurber alienated many of his former colleagues with boring boasts of his past successes.

Grauer does not gloss over the humorist's flaws, instead presents a concise human portrait of one who brought laughter to the lives of many.

- Gail Cooke ... Read more

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Offers new insights into James Thurber, the man who has been called "America's Twentieth Century Mark Twain." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

My kingdom for a second set of eyes!
James Thurber was blind in one eye from the age of six and nearly totally blind for the last years of his life, but he still managed to publish stories and essays free of misspellings and grammatical and typographical errors. Too bad he died in 1961, because Thomas Fensch could have used Thurber's help as an editor and proof reader. This book, published in 2000, evinces a genuine enthusiasm for Thurber, but a typical page has multiple misspellings and typographical errors. If this is the future of publishing, the future is likely to be short. ... Read more

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James Thurber was the most original, influential and, less we should forget, funniest American humorist of the last century. Writing and drawing cartoons for the New Yorker magazine from it's beginnings in the 1930s, he steadily shaped his own unique comic universe: a world governed by absurd logic where the trivial anxieties of everyday life slowly grind down its resigned citizens. Thurber's tales, alternately related in bemused deadpan and bewildered rage and are always excruciatingly funny and occasionally quietly disturbing too. This brand new selection, the first in over 50 years, reassembles his finest work for a new generation brought up on David Lynch and Jerry Seinfeld and features all his famous obsessions: the battle of the sexes, animals, travel, the delusional and certifiably insane. His 'casuals', as he liked to call his short pieces, drift between commercial fiction and surreal memoir. Spanning his whole career, this collection includes all his classic writings and cartoons, 'The Dream Life of Walter Mitty', 'The Catbird Seat', 'The Seal in the Bedroom', and half-forgotten gems that may be new even to fully qualified Thurber fans. ... Read more

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The brief appearance of a ghost late at night begins a series of comic misunderstandings during which the narrator's mother throws a shoe through a neighbor's window and his grandfather shoots a policeman. ... Read more