Al Jaffee's mad life

the long version

Al Jaffee's work has enlivened the pages of MAD magazine since 1955 and made him a cultural icon, but the story of his life has yet to be told. Six-year-old Jaffee was separated from his father, uprooted from his home in Savannah, Georgia, and transplanted by his mother to a shtetl in Lithuania, a world of kerosene lamps, outhouses, physical abuse, and near starvation. He was rescued by his father, returned to America, taken back yet again by his mother, and once again rescued by his father, even as Hitler was on the march. Finally back in America at twelve, he struggled with challenges at least as great as those he had met in Europe. But his artistic ability saved him: chosen to be in the first class to attend New York City's High School of Music and Art, he found himself in a movement that would change the face of humor in America.--From publisher description.