The Knee Jerk Review of Books

Your humble scribbler couldn't go to this month's convention of the AAEC without coming home with a couple of books (what, only two this time?), so instead of the usual Graphical History Tour today, I herewith present my highly amateurish book review.

The cover

I spotted May It Amuse the Court: Editorial Cartoons of the Supreme Court (H.L. Pohlman and Michael A. Kahn, Hill Street Press) in the bookstore at the Cartoon Art Museum and knew right away that I would have to buy it. The fellow manning the register told me that one of the authors was supposed to have attended our opening reception but had been unable to make it.

I have editorial cartoon books that focus on presidents, on foreign policy, or on specific wars; this is the only one I've seen devoted to the Court and the Constitution. The text is generously illustrated with editorial cartoons dating back to the mid-19th Century. Thankfully, most of those early cartoons are well-reproduced, considering that many of the original drawings no longer exist.

From the book: "Waiting" by James Albert Wales in Puck, April 20, 1881

Each chapter focuses on a specific constitutional issue: for example, the Civil War constitutional amendments, labor law, women's suffrage, Prohibition, New Deal legislation, and mid-20th-Century civil rights. The chapters are presented chronologically, but the chronology of the cartoons overlap from one chapter to the next.

The book came out in 2005, so there are some chapters that deserve updating — particularly the one on abortion rights — and there is only passing mention of LGBTQ+ rights. Certainly Republicans' denying President Barack Obama his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court nearly a year before the 2016 election and then ramming Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett through barely over a month before the 2020 election in order to pack the court with a right-wing supermajority should merit a new chapter.

If an updated edition ever comes about, there are a few cartoonists from past eras whose names need correction: Winsor McCay is in the book as Winsor Mecay; John Cassel is misidentified as Ino Cassals. Other cartoonists whose signatures are difficult to read, such as Al Frueh and Edwin Marcus, aren't identified at all. Of course, many of the earliest cartoons are unsigned and essentially anonymous. Properly and consistently crediting the rest would be an improvement. An index listing of the cartoonists would also be helpful, as would an index of the several court cases referenced by name in the text.

The authors' habit of describing each cartoon within the text becomes a little grating over the course of the book. Useful when discussing some of the more difficult-to-read and obscure cartoons in the earliest chapters, it seems superfluous in the later ones. Perhaps not in the audio book, if there is one.

Those are minor complaints I have, which I mention at the risk of dissuading someone from seeking out the book — well, that's the trouble with quibbles. 

On balance, I can heartily recommend Pohlman and Kahn's work to anyone interested in cartooning, the Supreme Court, or constitutional law.

From the cover of Terry Mosher's book

The other book I brought home was Terry "Aislin" Mosher's Aislin's Favourite COVID Cartoons from Around the World. Mosher was giving away signed copies of his book, originally published to raise funds for Community Healthcare in his hometown of Montréal. The cartoonists in this 336-page collection all donated their work for the cause.

I would gladly have donated a cartoon or two if I had been asked. For that matter, I would gladly have paid for this book ($30CDN).

I've read less than a third of the book so far, but it's a wonderful sampling of cartoons about the pandemic representing Canada, the U.S., China, Israel, Iran, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Philippines, Mexico, Mosher's native Canada, and many more.

Uncaptioned, by Ilya Katz, Israel

What is not represented, quite intentionally as Mosher told us, are cartoonists who are COVID skeptics, antivaxxers, and conspiracy fabulists. Their opinions may eventually be of interest to future generations marveling at the hysteria of our own, but they have no place in a book dedicated to health care professionals who have been at the front lines throughout the crisis.

✍

Daily Cartoonist reported last night the death of British cartoonist Tony Husband, whose book America in Cartoons I reviewed here six years ago. (The link to his books at my 2017 posting is broken; Daily Cartoonist has a better one.)

My review of America in Cartoons lamented that there was nothing about Watergate or the impeachment of President Clinton in it; the Pohlman & Kahn book reviewed today has chapters on both.