Best of
Humor

1948

The Little World of Don Camillo


Giovannino Guareschi - 1948
    In this period the Italian Communist Party is very strong, but the Second World War and fascism are still vividly remembered. Boscaccio has a communist mayor named Peppone. He wants to realise the communist ideals, and the Roman Catholic priest Don Camillo is desperately trying to prevent this. But despite their different views these men can count on each other in the fight against social injustice and abuses.

City Boy


Herman Wouk - 1948
    A hilarious and often touching tale of an urban kid's adventures and misadventures on the street, in school, in the countryside, always in pursuit of Lucille, a heartless redhead personifying all the girls who torment and fascinate pubescent lads of eleven.

Spring Fever


P.G. Wodehouse - 1948
    Ellery Cobbold has sent his son Stanwood, a blundering ex-American football player, to London, to separate him from Hollywood starlet Eileen Stoker with whom he is in love. When Cobbold discovers that Stoker is also in London, making pictures, he insists that Stanwood goes to stay with a distant relation, curmudgeonly widower Lord Shortlands.Spring Fever is a novel by P.G. Wodehouse, first published on 20 May 1948, in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States by Doubleday and Co, New York. Although not featuring any of Wodehouse's regular characters, the cast contains a typical Wodehousean selection of English aristocrats, wealthy Americans, household staff and imposters.

Benya Krik, the Gangster and Other Stories


Isaac Babel - 1948
    A protege and friend of Maxim Gorky, Babel came to prominence in the early 1920's with the publication of Red Cavalry, but as Stalin's repressive regime made the position of the creative writer increasingly difficult during the next decade, Babel published less and less. In 1939, he was arrested, and his papers, which were seized by the police, vanished with him. The charge against him is not known. A certificate delivered to the family shortly after Stalin died gives March 17, 1941, as the data of Babel's death, but mentions neither its cause nor where it had occurred. He was "rehabilitated" in 1954. His complete works were re-issued in Moscow in 1957.

Westward Ha!


S.J. Perelman - 1948
    Perelman's companion is cartoonist Al Hirschfield, whose drawings capture the very essence of Perelmania.

The Best of Clarence Day, Including: God and My Father / Life With Father / Life With Mother / This Simian World / and Selections from Thoughts Without Words


Clarence Day Jr. - 1948
    

Especially Father


Gladys Taber - 1948
    

The Life and Times of the Shmoo


Al Capp - 1948
    A comical satire based on the author's comic strip Li'l Abner.

Full Moon


Georgette Heyer - 1948
    Assuming that he is too late for dinner, he stops at an inn, whereupon he stumbles across a man drinking heavily and sad about his upcoming elopement with an heiress. It appears the heiress' papa has set her up with a, assumed, fat old fella, and the heiress wants nothing to do with that.

Four In Family


Humphrey Pakington - 1948
    Very descriptive and closely scrutinizing of English village life, it encompasses a new family's entry into Severnhampton life.