Kliph Nesteroff has been called the “premier popular historian of comedy,” by the New York Times. He is the author of two previous books, The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy and We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy. His work has been praised by comedy legends from Gilbert Gottfried to Mel Brooks, Fred Willard to Norm Macdonald.