(This article was originally published at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
The other day at the library I noticed a pink-covered book, “We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy.” It was filled with interviews. Cool!
I checked it out and . . . jeez was it boring. It’s hard to imagine you could interview a bunch of comedians and come up with something so blah. This book is only a million times worse than The Last Laugh, which I blurbed here.
I did a quick web search . . . hmmm, the book was reviewed by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, featured on NPR . . . yeah, that all makes sense, as it sounds like a great idea for a book.
Here’s the Times review, which is pretty much what I would say. The book might be interesting to historians but it’s surprisingly non-entertaining.
Or, to ba fair, maybe I should flip it around: The book is not entertaining but it might be interesting to historians. Who says books have to be entertaining? Bayesian Data Analysis is not particularly entertaining, so why do I ask that of others.
Still, if you’re interested in the recent history of comedy, I recommend you start with The Last Laugh.
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