The study of American humor as a cultural denominator is changing from the limited review of southwestern vernacular writers leading up to Mark Twain into a broad field with feminist, popular-cultural, ethnic, and international components. Tracing American life through its comic artifacts results in an incredibly colorful patchwork quilt of cultural dynamism, a dynamism in no way decreasing as television challenges print media and as issues of egalitarian ethics bring about transformations in the role of women, ethnic standing, criminal justice, and sexual mores.

Multicultural and diverse in terms of modern and classic figures, these essays deal with subjects ranging from Beavis and Butt-head and Richard Pryor to Edith Wharton and Edgar Allan Poe, from "old maids" and "wily widders" to the "comic Texan" and "funny Republican". American Humor, the first such anthology in over a decade, places American humor in social and historic context and anticipates further developments in the field.