How Jews Invented American Comedy

By Fabian Wolff for The Jewish Daily Forward   

The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy; By Kliph Nesteroff; Grove Press, 448 Pages, $28.00

This book is about comedy, but it’s not very funny. Nor should it be: In his history of American comedy, Kliph Nesteroff writes about “drunks, thieves and scoundrels” — comedians, in a word. His book is concerned with basically everybody who has stood on a stage or behind a microphone and told jokes, from 1900 to today.

That means vaudevillians chased out of “hate towns” in the South; nightclub comics paid by the Mob; radio entertainers kowtowing to sponsors (or not); comedy writers inventing TV; hippie comedians trying to bring down the Man; stand-up hacks doing 20 minutes (and coke before and after) in three different clubs every night during the comedy boom of the 1980s; and cranky comedians podcasting out of their living rooms or garages. Canadian writer Nesteroff brings them all together.

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