The 50 funniest American writers*: an anthology of humor from Mark Twain to the Onion

A presidential candidate / Mark Twain

The lecture tickets that were bought but never used / George Ade

The ransom of Red Chief / O. Henry

from Babbitt / Sinclair Lewis

from Gentlemen prefer blondes / Anita Loos

On conversation / Ring Lardner

Imperial purple / H.L. Mencken

More alarms at night / James Thurber

The waltz / Dorothy Parker

Farewell, my lovely appetizer / S.J. Perelman

Simple prays a prayer / Langston Hughes

The night the old nostalgia burned down / Frank Sullivan

Across the street and into the grill / E.B. White

The house of mirth / Peter De Vries

from The magic Christian / Terry Southern

from How to talk dirty and influence people / Lenny Bruce

The secret vice / Tom Wolfe

The counterfeit secret circle member gets the message, or The asp strikes again

The Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved / Hunter S. Thompson

A look at organized crime / Woody Allen

The tax man / Bruce Jay Friedman

Letters to Einstein / Philip Roth

A few words about breasts / Nora Ephron

Our white heritage / Henry Beard, Michael O'Donoghue, George W.S. Trow

Better read than dead: a revised opinion / Fran Lebowitz

Your action line / Charles Portis

In the morning post / Donald Barthleme

Curb Carter policy discord effort threat / Veronica Geng

Vacation '58 / John Hughes

The laws of cartoon motion / Mark O'Donnell

The Tip-Top Club / Garrision Keillor

Rolled in rare Bohemian onyx, then vulcanized by hand / Bruce McCall

Tough as bob war and other stuff / Molly Ivins

Corrections / Calvin Trillin

Tips for women: how to have a relationships with a guy / Dave Barry

Clinton deploys vowels to Bosnia / The Onion

Shiftless little loafers / Susan Orlean

Gothic baseball / Roy Blount Jr.

If I were in charge of the networks / George Carlin

Laws concerning foor and drink ; Household principles ; Lamentations of the father / Ian Frazier

The writer's life / David Rakoff

from I ain't scared of you / Bernie Mac

Buddy, can you spare a tie? / David Sedaris

It's so hard / Wanda Sykes

What I'd say to the Martians / Jack Handey

Your three wishes: F.A.Q. / David Owen

Ask the optimist! / George Saunders

Awake / Jenny Allen

The pony problem / Sloane Crosley

If not an apology, at least a "My bad" / Larry Wilmore.