San Antonio College Library

Satirical pieces, classical and contemporary.

Collection of satirical essays on comedy and obscenity in politics and culture.

"The critic Edmund Wilson called Sinclair Lewis "one of the national poets." In the 1920s, Lewis fired off a fusillade of sensational novels, exploding American shibboleths with a volatile mixture of caricature and photographic realism. With an unerring eye for the American scene and an omnivorous ear for American talk, he mocked such sacrosanct institutions as the small town (Main Street), business (Babbitt), medicine (Arrowsmith), and religion (Elmer...

"Is the comedy of Stephen Colbert simply fun or is it powerful political satire? Does it entertain viewers or does it empower them? Or does it teach us that in today's media-saturated world those binaries make no sense? America According to Colbert: Satire as Public Pedagogy claims that Colbert's satire fosters critical thinking about social issues, encourages active citizenship, and entertains the viewer--all at the same time. The first book to cover...

Prior to his death, Francis Tarwater's great uncle prophesies that Francis will called to be a prophet of the Lord. He also prophesies that his nephew Rayber's son, Bishop, will be baptized by Tarwater. At the old man's death, little Bishop, thanks to Rayber's alert opposition, remains unbaptized, and on Tarwater falls the burden of baptizing him. A struggle over Bishop begins between Tarwater and Rayber. Yet Tarwater, interiorly, is undergoing a...

Sensing in Sinclair Lewis's life an endless swordplay between romance and realism, Martin Light proposes here a new perspective, that of quixotism, through which to view his novels. The romantic who schools himself on sentimental novels, who sees himself riding forth to conquer, and who finds a world that is more the projection of his illusions than of a sense of reality is called a quixote, according to the author. He sees this quality in Lewis's...

Collecting the most controversial work from the prolific founding father of "new journalism," this anthology of countercultural rantings, riffs, and revolutionary writings carries readers from the 1950s through the sexual revolution and into the 1990s.

A witty, entertaining anthology contains more than two hundred wickedly enjoyable little-known verse selections from such masters of satire as Dryden, Swift, Donne, Byron, Pope, Auden, and Cummings.

Offers a whimsical critique of the Right, exposing their deceptive practices, challenging conceptions about the media's liberal bias, and identifying inconsistencies in the Bush administration.