Presidential Bookshelf – About Comics

Teddy Roosevelt: His Career in Cartoons

Teddy Roosevelt: His Career in Cartoons by Albert Shaw with Nat Gertler

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, is a larger-than-life figure. He wasn’t just a politician, he was also a warrior, an explorer, a naturalist, and a power broker. He also thrived during a period when editorial cartooning was a major, often front-page part of the political discussion. Now About Comics has released Teddy Roosevelt: His Career in Cartoons, a biography filled with over 600 relevant political cartoons from the era.
This volume uses as a base the 1910 book A Cartoon History of Roosevelt’s Career by professor-turned-journalist Albert Shaw, and then expands on it, adding over 50 additional cartoons chroncling the period after that original publication and Roosevelt’s 1919 death. The expansion’s cartoons were selected by Nat Gertler (an Eisner Award winner for his writing about comics), who also supplied additional text to tell the story of Roosevelt during this period and to give the cartoons context.
Roosevelt had been in the public eye well before he became President. He’d been a president of the New York City police board, governor of New York, an assistant secretary of the US Narvy, a Rough Rider, and a vice-president. The earliest cartoons in the book are from 1884, when he was a member of the New York State Assembly.
This volume includes cartoons from a wide array of sources, both in the US and abroad, making the book an effective depiction of the range of styles that cartoonists wielded. Perhaps more significantly, it demonstrates the many angles of interpretation; an editorial cartoon is not supposed to be neutral, and so the various artists get to show Roosevelt as a hero, a scoundrel, a madman, a statesman, an impediment, an inspiration, and so forth

282 pages
black-and-white
gloss, 80# paper
7.44 x 9.68 in
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949996-84-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949996-83-8

Not available through Amazon, but you can order the paperback or hardcover through Lulu.com!

(Note: This title does not mix-and-match with other titles for wholesale shipping deals.)

Miss Caroline: the Complete Camelot Collection

written by Gerald Gardner
drawn by Frank Johnson

The year was 1963. The Kennedy clan inhabited the White House, capturing the imagination of the Nation. JFK inspired the nation’s dreams. Jackie inspired the nation’s fashion. And young Miss Caroline Kennedy inspired a book of cartoons that found the humor in both White House life and in being the next generation in a dynasty.This edition collects, for the first time, all of the Miss Caroline cartoons that saw print, either in the book or in the strip’s brief newspaper run, all written by Gerald Gardner, a screenwriter on such hilarious series as Get Smart and The Monkees, and writer of the best-selling “Who’s In Charge Here?” photofunny books and drawn by Frank Johnson of “Boner’s Ark.”

Paperback : 135 pages, 5.25″x8″
ISBN-10 : 1949996271
ISBN-13 : 978-1949996272

Order it from Amazon! (Or ask your favorite independent bookseller to order it for you.)

You Don’t See These Sights on the Regular Tours

In the midst of the cold war, a committee of cartoonists came together under a pet program of President Eisenhoweer. Their goal was to help Americans’ relationships with the people of the rest of the world. The enemy was the stereotype of “the Ugly American.” So most of the top names from the nation’s funny pages chipped in on this effort to both dispel this stereotype and to encourage Americans not to live down to it, with a series of gag cartoons saying “Americans don’t do these things!” but also “Americans: don’t do these things!”

Here are cartoons by the famed creators of Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, Li’l Abner, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Blondie, Steve Canyon, and many more, narrated in this new edition by patriotic comic book superguy Mister U.S.Cartoonists: Chic Young, Milton Caniff, Charles Schulz, Mort Walker, Hank Ketcham, Al Capp, Scott Roberts, Otto Soglow, Jimmy Hatlo, Alfred Andriola, Dik Browne, Rube Goldberg, Roy Crane, Bernard Lansky, Bob Lubbers, Gus Edson, Irwin Hasen, Ernie Bushmiller, Mel Casson, Stan Drake, Harry Devlin, Dick Cavalli.

List price: $7.99
Paperback: 100 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1949996042
ISBN-13: 978-1949996043
Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.3 x 7.4 inches

JFK Coloring Book

How did a coloring book spend 14 weeks on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list???

The year was 1962. America was in love with the young family in the White House, speaking of them with awe and reverence.

Then the JFK Coloring Book was released, and punctured all that.

Conceived by publisher Alexander A. Roman, with drawings by Mad Magazine’s master caricaturist Mort Drucker and text by his Mad cohort Paul Laikin and Ratfink Room comedian Jackie Kannon, the book used the form of a coloring book supposedly crafted by four year old Caroline Kennedy to poke fun at the whole Kennedy clan, their friends and their fellow players on the political scene, including every one from Frank Sinatra to Jimmy Hoffa. The publication of this unique volume lead off a whole Kennedy comedy stampede, with things like Vaughn Meader’s First Family albums coming in its wake.

Comedy was replaced by tragedy with JFK’s assassination, and the Coloring Book which had once had print runs in the hundreds of thousands disappeared from bookstore shelves, not to return for over half a century. Now the time has come to remember Kennedy and his family not just as tragic figures, but as the way they were and the way we saw them then.

As an added bonus, this edition also includes Political Wind-ups, another book full of Drucker caricatures, with text by Roman and Rochelle Davis, taking a look at the political figures of the day (Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Nixon, and many more) and asking a vital question: if this person were a wind-up toy, what would it do when you wound it up?

Annotations have been included for both of the books, to educate those who are too young to have lived through the times and to remind those who may no longer remember the details.

Since the release of this new edition, the JFK Coloring Book has been discussed on NPR’s On The Media and in the pages of the New Republic. It’s a book the world is clearly ready for again!

List Price: $7.99

8.5″ x 11″ (21.59 x 27.94 cm)
Black & White Bleed on White paper
76 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1936404483
ISBN-10: 1936404486
BISAC: Humor / Topic / Political

Order the JFK Coloring Book from Amazon!

Dear President Johnson

What do you get when Bill Adler, creator of such best-selling books as The Kennedy Wit, teams up with Charles M. Schulz, creator of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the whole Peanuts gang, and they draw from the creativity of the millions of kids in America? You get Dear President Johnson –a collection of the letters kids sent to the White House, facing the President with their questions, their wishes, and their dreams. Originally published during the LBJ administration, this book has been brought back to print to delight a whole new generation.

List Price: $9.99

6″ x 6″ (15.24 x 15.24 cm)
Black & White Bleed on Cream paper
102 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1936404568
ISBN-10: 1936404567
BISAC: Humor / Topic / Political

Order Dear President Johnson from Amazon.

Kids’ Letters to President Kennedy

Genuine letters sent from the kids of the early 1960s to JFK show you the dreams, obsessions, and general attitude of America’s children. New York Times best-selling book creator worked with the White House mail department to find letters that were delightful, intriguing, and representative of the thousands of letters that would stream in each week. The book is augmented by dozens of delightful illustrations by Louis Darling, better know for this work on Beverly Cleary’s Beezus & Ramona books. Out of print for half a century, this book is now back in this paperback edition!

5″x8″, 162 pages, black-and-white on cream paper, list price $14.99 US.

This book is part of our Presidential Bookshelf line.

Order Kids’ Letters to President Kennedy from Amazon.com!