The Art of Controversy

the long version

This book offers readers a look at the power of the political cartoon throughout history to enrage, provoke, and amuse. As a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and the longtime editor of The Nation, the author knows just how incendiary, and transformative, cartoons can be. Here he guides readers through some of the greatest cartoons ever sketched, by such artists as: George Grosz, David Levine, Herblock, Honore Daumier, Thomas Nast, Ralph Steadman, and others, as he asks what makes cartoons so uniquely positioned to affect our minds and our hearts. Drawing on his own enounters with would-be censors, interviews with cartoonists, and historical archives from cartoon museums across the globe, he examines the political cartoon as both art and polemic over the centuries. Incorporating neuroscience, psychology, and a sweeping historical view of the cartoon's evolution, this is a book for all lovers of satire, politics, and the art form of the political cartoon.