Potatoes constitute the basis of his family's daily fare, and they share both bed and board with the sheep and pigs. A scathing satire on narratives of Gaelic Ireland, this work brought down on the author's head the full wrath of those who saw themselves as the custodians of Irish language and tradition when it was first published in Gaelic in 1941.

    Smith, one of the preeminent journalistic humorists of the early mid-20th century, weaves wry vignettes of events and people of his time that are both observational and autobiographical.

    Written in 1941, Blithe Spirit remained the longest-running comedy in British Theatre for years. Plotted around the central role of one of Coward's best loved characters, a medium Madame Arcati (originally played by Margaret Rutherford). Coward's play is a spirited charade about a man with 2 wives, one dead and another alive.

    They are characterized by dead calms, light, baffling winds and hot, dry weather. If a ship came along and got stuck in one of those dead calms, drinking water might soon run out and then everyone would go berserk, including the horses (if they were onboard). In fact as passengers and crew clambered around in their berserkness, the horses might get thrown overboard. At least that's H. Allen Smith's story -- and he's sticking to it.Always quick to see the zany side of even the most serious of situations and known as a prankster, Smith descended on the Paramount lot like a plague of locusts and then proceeded to offer such vital contributions as mowing the lawn and asking for the men's room. He rubbed elbows daily with such great names as Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, W. C. Fields, and James Cagney as well as leading agents, directors and producers.Since Smith and non-conformity have always been a devastatingly funny combination, his misadventures in movieland, as well as his views about whoever or whatever captured his attention, rate top billing in the annals of the human comedy.

    Born in Kansas City, MO, in 1905, Reg came to Phoenix, AZ as a boy and has lived with the cacti ever since. He has served on the board of the famous Arizona Desert Botanical Garden for years, but denies that he is a botanical expert. "I can't remember Latin names," he explains. "I know the desert plants as friends, not specimens of Cactaceae." Reg and his wife Ruth (whom he met in high school art class) have one son, Lt. Col. Dave (Arizona Air Guard), who provided them with a daughter-in-law, Peggy, and two grandchildren, Melanie and Mike. If you don't want to talk about cacti, Reg will gladly discuss grandchildren.

    Peter Churchmouse and Gabriel Churchkitten join forces to convince Parson Pease-Porridge to supply Peter with enough food, so he won't need to nibble on things around the church.

    He is not - decidedly not - without reason. (The pike is pretty nasty as fish go, don't you agree?)And while Cuppy may frequently leave in his wake more questions than answers, we surely owe him a debt of gratitude for at least asking. After all, someone has to consider the distinctions between Stoats and Ermines, or why the Age of Reptiles simply had to come to an end. And if his take on the Giant Ground Sloth is less than flattering, who are we to quibble?And grateful we are, if only for the author's flawless observations: the carp's "falciform pharyngeal teeth;" a fish that sings through its "glenoid cavity;" M. Danois, who is "seventy-two times as smart as the average Tunny." No other writer of our ken could pinpoint the coloring of the Common Viper as "gray, greenish, yellowish brown, reddish, or black."Decorated with illustrations by the ever-delightful William Steig, this bestiary of fanciful, fretful, and ferocious creatures is sure to enlighten the naturalist in all of us, the one who never really understood why, exactly, so little is known of the Dodo's daily life, even if it's too late to ask about it now.